Once A Warrior King
by ucsbdad
Summary: Once more the Imperial French task force from A Matter of Intelligence meets with Farscape gang. COMPLETE!
1. Chapter 1

Once A Warrior King

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I own neither Farscape or Hammer's Slammers, but you already knew that, didn't you? Rating: Pretty much K, or K+. I'll let you know if it changes. Time: Not too long after A Matter of Intelligence.

 **Frederic de Gautier**.

"Lieutenant de Gautier, reporting as ordered, sir." I halted and saluted my commander as I crossed the threshold into his office. He waved at me vaguely, acknowledging my salute and continued to stare at the viewscreen on the far wall.

I sighed inwardly. Our commander, who had recently promoted himself to Rear Admiral, was busy, busy looking at his command. The screen covered nearly the entire wall, some four meters by four. The center of the screen showed the Delvian planet Forests of Bazil and the twenty-four terra-formed moons that were the source of the planets wealth, and indeed, our wealth.

Surrounding the main image were twelve smaller images, all showing the ships of our small task force. At top right was the Imperial French Navy Ship _Austerlitz_ , the flagship. She was the newest and best light cruiser of what had once been a proud navy. She mounted thirty two long range ship-killing missile tubes, eight twelve-gigawatt directed energy weapon mounts, and anti-missile defenses, including missile systems and directed energy weapons.

The next screen showed the only other warship that had originally accompanied us into this New Universe, the destroyer _Chacal_. _Chacal_ mounted twelve missile tubes and four smaller directed energy weapons, plus the usual complement of anti-missile systems.

Then there was the ship I was standing on, _Wessex Lady_. The _Lady_ was a two million ton freighter that had been converted to an auxiliary. She carried enough spare missiles and other supplies to maintain a task force for a year or more. Her capacious hull also contained all manner of workshops to keep a task force operational. From the angle the screen showed, we were seeing _Wessex Lady_ from _Chacal_.

Once these two warships had chased off an Ilanic predator that was extorting "taxes" from the Delvians, we had begun escorting convoys taking the valuable pharmaceuticals the Delvians grew on their moons. We did this for a price. This both made us money and proved to the New Universe that we were not pirates. There was no shortage of them in this New Universe.

Being found to be good, law abiding fellows who had their finances in order, we had recently been joined by four missile frigates of the now defunct Navy of the Republic of Cymru: RCN Ships _Saint Brannoc_ , _Saint Gildas_ , _Saint Cadoc_ , and _Saint Daffyd_. Missile frigates were half the size of destroyers, but still carried twelve ship-killer missile tubes. Of course, the carried fewer missile reloads and other weapons.

They were shortly followed by RCN _Bethesda_ , a destroyer. As the Republic had been our allies in the Old Universe, their ships were Imperial French designs built in their own shipyards. Accordingly, they could be easily supported by us. _Bethesda_ was, in fact, a slightly older model of the _Chacal_ class.

Our best acquisition was the light cruiser IFNS _Solferino_ , 28. Her commander, Captain Botella, had come to this New Universe for much the same reasons we had and with much the same idea in mind. He had under his command the destroyer _l'Insurgente,_ 12, but he had no ship such as our _Lady_. As we did, he began escorting convoys of merchant ships in the more dangerous areas of the New Universe. There was no shortage of dangerous areas, either.

He was escorting a convoy of seven Hynerian cargo ships through an uninhabited solar system when a Charrid-manned dreadnaught had lumbered out from behind a gas giant and headed for the convoy. Botella had ordered the convoy to scatter and turned his ships towards the Charrid. One merchant was too slow and clumsy to avoid the Charrid. Botella took his ships in too close to draw the Charrid off.

Human ships are faster than their local counterparts and our anti-ship missiles have twice the range of their frag cannons. But if you have to go in close…Well, it's not at all advised.

Botella poured missile salvo after missile salvo into the Charrid, the detonation laser warheads doing great damage. But the Charrid hit _l'Insurgente_ with a blast from her frag cannon destroying the ship's computers. Both sides disengaged.

Botella found that _l'Insurgente_ could barely maneuver and couldn't fight. They managed to get deep into interstellar space where Botella took _l'Insurgente's_ crew off and left her. Botella came to us. He had expended twenty five percent of his long range missiles in that one action, lost his only escort, and couldn't afford another such fight. We managed to get _l'Insurgente_ back to the Forests of Bazil solar system, but there was no possibility we could repair her. We stripped her of all her missiles and removed any usable parts. She now orbited the planet until we could get her into a real shipyard and repair her or until we had to destroy her.

The last ship in our little task force was IFNS _Amarillo_ , formerly the People's Revolutionary Democratic Socialist Republic of Texas Ship _Amarillo_. She was a half million ton fast transport built to military specifications rather than merchant ship specs. She mounted eight missile tubes as well as anti-missile systems. Captain Chenel had been a prisoner of war aboard her when the Tamarisk Alliance had collapsed at the end of The Wars back in our Old Universe. In the confusion, he had seized command of her and eventually managed to bring her back home. He found our home planet, France, in chaos. We had lost The Wars, and had all of our extra-system colonies stripped away. Millions of ex-military and former colonists flooded back to their home world. Many at home blamed them for the state the planet was in. The government, befuddled as it had been throughout the decades of war, at once tried to suppress dissent and cater to it. The result was chaos, riots, strikes, assassinations, and endless hardships. Chenel sensibly decided to head for the New Universe.

We used _Amarillo_ to transport the products of our Delvian friends and so make more money.

Admiral Darlan finally swung his chair around to face me. "Come in, Frederic. Sit down, boy. What happened in my absence? Tell me, how did your first mission as a diplomat go? "

I sat. "It didn't go well at all, sir." I admitted. "First Guide Civa will not make any kind of a formal agreement with us. We can come to this solar system, we can buy their products and we can escort merchant ships from here to the markets at Garden of Galil, but that's all. She made a point of mentioning that the Seek is a pacifist religion."

"Some pacifists!" Darlan growled. "They don't mind having those Luxans around to do their fighting for them."

I shrugged. "First Guide Civa says that the Luxans have been guests on Forests of Bazil for a century. If their guests wish to fortify the planet's moons with frag cannon batteries that is the Luxan's concern. We, on the other hand, were not invited here. They have no objection to our remaining in orbit here, no objection to our organizing convoys to take their goods to market and no objection to our making money from our efforts."

"As if they could stop us from doing this!" said the admiral.

"Actually, I can quite understand Pa'u Civa's point of view, sir. Now, they get nothing but benefits from our being here. If our presence were regularized, if we had a treaty or if we became their official navy, things would be different. If we offend some powerful local star nation or some human force, they can claim to be uninvolved with us and possibly escape being attacked. They have everything to lose and nothing to gain by signing a treaty with us, sir."

Darlan sighed. Then he smiled. "I hadn't really expected we'd get one anyway, Frederic. But, tell me how you have done as my intelligence officer?"

"I have good news and bad news, sir."

"Ah, give me the good news first. There's always enough bad news."

"Captain Cheka and the _Okrana_ are no longer a problem, sir."

"Good! Our efforts to assassinate the bastard paid off? Or your plan with the Cho-Sens?"

I shook my head. Cheka was the renegade Ilanic navy officer who had been extorting so-called taxes from our Delvian friends. While we might have been able to destroy him in a stand up fight, that was too dangerous. When we first got to Forests of Bazil with only two warships, we couldn't take the chance of a fight. So, we bought him off with thirty percent of our profits. Since we were taking whole merchantmen loaded with pharmaceuticals to Garden of Galil, that thirty percent was worth far more than the pharmaceuticals he could pack into his cruiser. We had even staged a fake space battle with the _Okrana_ to impress Pa'u Civa and her Luxan guests. Later, we'd had a real fight with a Luxan assault piercer and destroyed him. However, sooner or later, Captain Cheka and the _Okrana_ would have to go. He felt the same way about us, of course. "Captain Cheka is now on his way to a nice, pleasant pleasure planet with his funds. He left his ship in orbit over Karraid and went down to the moon with four officers. The officers were eventually found dead except for an Ilanic female. An attractive one by their standards, I'm told."

"That still leaves that damned cruiser to worry about, Frederic, even if it is a damned obsolete pile of junk."

"Not so, sir." I said with a smile. "Before he left, Cheka left a logic bomb in his ship's computer. After he was gone a few hours, the _Okrana_ automatically began shooting at the other ships in orbit around Karraid. That was two Luxans, somewhat larger than the assault piercer we fought, a large Charrid corsair and a human privateer. _Okrana_ was destroyed before the crew could get the computer shut down."

Admiral Darlan chuckled. "And his thirty percent now goes to us. What else?"

"The Emperor of Cho-Sen has relocated, sir, somewhere in the area of the Luxan worlds. Apparently he found out that Marshal O'Donnell had him on his list and left before the Marshal sent forces to destroy him."

The Emperor was a megalomaniac but a damned smart one. His heavy cruisers could have pounded our task force to scrap. I was glad we wouldn't have to face his fanatical warriors.

"What else?"

"That's the end of the good news, I'm afraid, sir. Captain O'Hara came in three days ago. She was hauling rare earths from Gondarr when she was attacked by a Luxan ship. The attacker was smaller than an assault piercer, and not as fast. Not quite as fast as _Whistling Dixie_ , anyway. The important thing is that the Luxan fired two missiles at her. Her electronic warfare systems were able to jam their guidance systems and they never exploded." This was important. One of the advantages we humans had over the locals was our use of missiles which had at least twice the range of the plasma weapons the locals used. If that advantage disappeared…

Darlan shrugged. "We've always known that our technological superiority was a wasting asset, Frederic. The Peacekeepers are known to be working on missiles based on their Prowler manned space craft. We assume that others are doing the same."

"I downloaded her records of the attack, sir. They'll be useful in coming up with counter measures to any new missiles. In exchange, I promised Captain O'Hara that we'd escort her ship to Garden of Galil, no charge, sir. I hope that was all right."

He nodded. "Perfectly, Frederic. What else has happened in my absence?"

"A tramp freighter belonging to a race called the P'Alai came in also, sir. They were hit by what appears to be a human pirate operating between here and the Ordanium Rift. They were stopped, boarded and the pirate looted their ship of everything of value then damaged their engine so that it took two weeks for them to get here. One of the crewmembers managed to take some videos of the pirates and their ships. The pirates are Russian speaking. They have one warship that looks like it might be a heavy destroyer. It definitely has sixteen missile mounts rather than the usual twelve on most destroyers."

"As long as we have cruisers to escort our convoys, that'll be no problem, Frederic."

"Yes, sir. But it is worrisome if we ever have to send a lone destroyer or missile frigate on a mission, as we sometimes do, sir. In addition, the pirates had a large, human built merchant ship in company, a three million tonner, at least, sir."

"Damn!" Darlan barked. "The bastards are planning to be here for while then. It could take years to load up a merchant ship of that size."

"Yes, sir. The P'Alai seem to be rather technologically backwards. Their engine was badly overworked getting them here. I had some of the engineers from the _Lady_ look her over. They doubt it can ever be fixed."

"So?"

"Hearts and minds, sir."

"What do you want us to do, Frederic?" Darlan said wearily.

"Just transport them to Garden of Galil, sir."

He nodded. "What else?"

"I've saved the worst news for last, sir." I took a deep breath. "France, our home world, is now a republic. Emperor Charles was deposed and sent into exile in the English Commonwealth."

"You're positive?"

"A courier ship from Human Forces Command brought the news, sir. It's true."

"Who's in charge there, then?"

"Pierre Poujade, sir." I said slowly. I expected an eruption from Admiral Darlan.

But, he just sat and stared over my head. He stared for a long time. "Frederic, the good God knows that our emperor, Charles, was a poor advertisement for a hereditary monarchy. His government was a poor advertisement for…anything."

"But, once the Empire meant something! Do you recall when we first met? I was commanding the destroyer-transport _Cignone_? You were helping the paramilitaries on that planet…"

"Massai, sir." I reminded him.

"Yes, yes, it was Massai." The Admiral smiled slightly, recalling those times. "So you recall how the slaves poured out of the mines to attack their oppressors? Hardly one in ten had a modern weapon. Half had no weapon at all. But they knew that the Empire stood with them and that the Empire stood for liberty, equality and fraternity. And with our help, they won."

"Yes." I said glumly. "And their mines gave them enough wealth to buy a reasonable position with the Great Powers, as they call themselves. Unlike us."

Darlan waved his hands dismissively. "What can this republic stand for under a man like Poujade? Corruption? Incompetence? Cowardice? Nepotism?"

The Imperial government that had fallen had stood, in the final analysis, for much the same things. I wisely said nothing.

Admiral Darlan reached into his desk and removed a bottle and two glasses. I groaned inwardly, but allowed a slight smile to reach my lips. The Admiral did not drink wine like civilized men did, but drank an apple brandy from the moon Normandie. I thought it was more suitable for removing paint. He filled both glasses and handed one to me.

He raised his glass. " _Vive l'Empereur_!" He downed the brandy in one gulp.

" _Vive l'Empereur_." I replied and did the same.

He put the bottle and glasses away and then smiled broadly at me. "Let me give you my good news, young lieutenant. While we were at Garden of Galil, Commodore Graham, Field Marshal O'Donnell's representative called on me. There'll be a representative from the Marshal there in four weeks. He wants to negotiate an agreement with us. What do you think of that good news?"

I smiled. This was the best news we'd had since we'd arrived in the New Universe and I told the admiral so.

"Frederic, this means a treaty of friendship at least. Perhaps even an alliance. At a stroke of the pen, ninety percent of our problems are gone." I nodded, starting to imagine the possibilities. Darlan kept talking. "We should seek to expand our convoy system. We'll use Forests of Bazil as a base. Those damned Luxans and their frag cannons can hold this system well enough. We can start with the mines at Gondarr. A few merchant ships full of rare earths, yttrium, lanthanum, holmium, and the like will be worth enough to buy us a nice heavy cruiser eventually."

While our two light cruisers were more powerful individually than the average raider in these parts, a heavy cruiser would be nice. A division of battleships would be better, but that would be dreaming.

"The sub-Jovian world, Moree-Puth, isn't it? They extract valuable gasses. Being hydrogen breathers it's easy for them. They could also use our help. There are others, I'm sure."

Admiral Darlan was beginning to plan his future. He waved me away. "Give me an intelligence appreciation on this in a few days, Frederic."

I saluted and headed for the door.

"One other thing, Frederic. Pa'u Zhaan will be accompanying us as a representative for Forests of Bazil. Please brief her as soon as possible on our impending treaty with Human Forces Command and the proposed expansion of our convoy system. I'm sure she'll be interested in the latter. I believe she's in her quarters."

I nodded and headed for Pa'u Zhaan's quarters, not happily, but I went.

Seeing a beautiful woman was not unpleasant for me, of course. And Pa'u Zhaan was beautiful. She had blue skin with golden freckles, was an intelligent vegetable and was a bit over one hundred years old, quite young for her race. But she was beautiful, and extremely sexy. No, my problem with her was that she represented her race to our task force. She was some sort of diplomat and to me that meant she was a spy. As an intelligence officer the first thing I did each morning was say to myself, "I know I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?"

I stopped before the door to her quarters, adjusted my uniform and knocked. "Pa'u Zhaan, it's Frederic de Gautier."

She opened the door at once and pulled me inside. She threw her arms around me and rubbed her very full breasts against my chest. "Frederic! How good to see you. I missed you when you were down on Forests of Bazil. Please, sit. Would you like some wine?"

I sat, but declined the wine. "No wine, Pa'u Zhaan. I'm on duty."

She frowned at me and then smiled mischievously. "Please, Frederic, call me Zufir, won't you?" She sat next to me and her hand promptly headed for my thigh. I managed to put my hand under hers. She smiled and rested her head on my shoulder. I quickly told her of our offer of a treaty with Human Forces Command.

Zufir lifted herself up so that her breasts were almost under my nose. "But I don't understand why this treaty should be so important, Frederic."

This was an example of why I didn't trust Pa'u Zhaan. I had explained our situation more than once to her. But what she was doing was a standard intelligence practice. Keep asking the same questions. If your subject is lying to you, you may catch him in a lie. Even if he's telling you the truth, he may let something slip that he'd prefer you didn't know. I smiled and began my explanation. Again. "There's an old saying among my people, Zufir. In war, amateurs speak of strategy, professionals speak of logistics."

"And what are these logistics, again, Frederic?" she asked prettily.

"The art and science of keeping the combat units supplied with all that they need, from warships to bandages."

"But you have this ship, the _Lady_ , to supply you."

"The _Lady_ can only provide us with so much." I said. Her hand disengaged from mine and headed for my chest. I was too late to stop her.

"And you need Marshal O'Donnell for these logistics? I don't understand."

I sighed inwardly. "Then I should begin at the beginning. As with many things, the story begins with the human John Crichton, his Sebacean wife and his three friends."

"Ka D'Argo, Chiana and Joolushko." Zufir added, smiling at me.

"Correct. Twenty plus years ago, they were fleeing from two Peacekeeper ships, a command carrier and a patrol cruiser, in what we now call the New Universe, this Universe of yours. Crichton attempted a slingshot maneuver around a dead planet to escape the Peacekeepers. Except it wasn't a planet."

"I know." She said happily. "It was an ancient, planet sized machine, powered by a black hole that allowed access between two different universes."

"Correct, Zufir. It was then called the Anomaly, but as we now know it to be a machine, we call in the Artifact."

"How old is it? How does it work? Are there other universes?"

I shrugged. "No one knows. No one has managed to land a probe on the Artifact and the data gleaned from drones that pass by it, is gibberish. I've heard that some scientists think it exists simultaneously in an infinite number of universes, but no one really knows."

I tried to get the conversation back on track. "Passing through the Artifact caused Crichton's ship's engines to cut out. But they caused the Peacekeeper's engines to explode, seriously damaging both ships and sending them off towards the local sun. Anyway, John Crichton landed on the planet K'hiff, an inhabitable and inhabited planet in that solar system, with the Peacekeepers using Prowlers, Marauders and other transports to evacuate their remaining crew to the planet.

"Neither group understood that they had entered a different universe, and a different time. John Crichton's time was over a thousand years in our past. Worse yet, from the Peacekeeper's perspective, the planet was occupied by a human army of ten first class mercenary regiments, commanded by Colonel Alois Hammer of Hammer's Slammers, the most feared mercenary armored regiment in human space."

I slid away from Pa'u Zhaan as her fingers dipped under my shirt. "What do you know of Peacekeeper tactics?"

She shook her head. "Nothing. We who follow the Seek find war abhorrent. We do not study it."

I had my doubts about that, but went on. "The Peacekeeper's tactics are to take control of the local space around a planet, then use their warships to batter the defenses from orbit. Then they use their Prowlers and Marauders to take out specific targets. When the planet's defenses are in shambles, they land relatively lightly armed commandos to mop up."

"Frederic, I wouldn't call a Peacekeeper commando lightly armed." As she swung her leg over mine, I inched away from her, causing her leg to drop back to the couch.

"Compared to a 170 ton fusion powered tank with iridium armor and a 20 centimeter power gun, they are lightly armed." I replied.

"But, what were left of the Peacekeeper's ships were quickly out of range or the planet, their frag cannons useless. Their smaller warcraft were facing an integrated, overlapping, planet-wide, aerospace defense system run by artificial intelligences. The Prowlers and Marauders never stood a chance. And the Peacekeeper ground troops, facing tanks, combat cars, infantry and artillery were slaughtered. Most of the warriors chose to fight to the death, although a few did not. Quite a few of the techs just changed masters."

"How terrible. But what happened then, Frederic?"

"Very little, for a long while. John Crichton and his friends returned through the Artifact. With all the problems they faced, they never made an issue of the odd artifact located deep in the Uncharted Territories."

"As for us humans, we had problems, too. What we came to call The Wars had already begun. A whole series of interlocking wars, involving constantly changing alliances that eventually involved all of human occupied space. After decades, some of the more powerful human star nations realized The Wars had to stop. As they said, "Either mankind ends The Wars, or The Wars end mankind." These nations banded together and forced an end to The Wars, sometimes by diplomacy, but more often by force. But end them they eventually did."

"I am glad they did, Frederic. Peace is always better than war. But I'm not sure you agree."

"Oh, I agree. I simply feel that there are things worse than war." Her hands began moving again. I spoke quickly. "When peace arrived, the Great Powers, as they call themselves, had a problem: Tens of millions of now unemployed soldiers and spacemen. Some could be used in the shrunken peacetime militaries, and others would happily go back to their civilian lives, but many could or would not."

"But why, Frederic?"

"Take the planet Apacheria. It was attacked by an enemy space fleet. Once the defending space ships were destroyed, the fleet bombarded Apacheria with thermonuclear weapons. All life on the planet was destroyed. At the end of The Wars there were still a hundred thousand or so Apaches who had been off planet who had nowhere to go."

"Consider our friends from the Republic of Cymru. Their planet was forcibly taken over by the Han Confederation. The Han decreed that anyone from Cymru that continued fighting against them was a traitor. The Han were one of the winners in The Wars, and the few Cymru who tried to go "home" were shot as traitors."

"But what of you, Frederic? You did go back to your home."

I nodded ruefully, thinking of my home world. "I did go home. The French Empire was one of the losers in The Wars and many people blamed those who fought for our loss. France was nearly bankrupt but had to absorb millions returning military personnel and ex-colonists. I can see why many hated us. I don't like it, but I can understand. " The situation was more complex than that, but I really didn't want to say more. "I decided I had no future on France and left with Admiral Darlan. I'm an intelligence officer and a good one. But what future would I have had if I'd stayed."

"How does this Marshal O'Donnell come into the story?"

"He had been a junior mercenary officer on K'hiff when the Peacekeepers came. He left to form his own small mercenary company. Along with him he took a surrendered Peacekeeper warrior, Aida Borzon. By the end of The Wars, he was the most powerful mercenary commander in human space. He commanded a whole field army and his own fleet. Most of his troops had no homes to return to, or none that would accept them. He refused to abandon his troops. He and his wife, now Aida Borzon O'Donnell, remembered the strange Artifact and the universe beyond it. They took a destroyer and found the secret of passing through the Artifact. Keep your ship completely unpowered, or else it'll blow up."

"They found this New Universe, Zufir, and decided to take their troops here to find a home. Hoping to attract others, they re-named themselves Human Forces Command."

"And so they brought their war here." She said sadly.

"You had wars before we ever arrived, centuries before, millennia before." She gave me an odd look, but I continued. "The Great Powers were thrilled to get rid of their excess soldiers so easily. To sweeten things, they opened their armories to Marshal O'Donnell and anyone who followed him. Those who went were never to return. The great Powers keep a sufficient fleet near the other side of the Artifact to insure that."

"But Human Forces Command didn't just get weaponry, either. They sent O'Donnell automated factories, orbital shipyards, asteroid mining ships, in short a whole industrial base. O'Donnell found an inhabitable planet not far from this terminal of the Artifact and made his base there: The planet Arsenal. Perhaps a quarter of the humans who entered the New Universe stayed with the Marshal. Those who followed Prince Paul of Parhoon number perhaps two thirds as many, and Paul's industrial base is far smaller. No one else is anywhere nearly as powerful as those two."

"I've heard of this Prince Paul." Zhaan sniffed. "He allied himself with some factions on Charrid worlds and then massacred his Charrid allies when they'd won."

"Price Paul was no better in our Old Universe. He's one human you should stay away from, Zufir."

"O'Donnell also made contact with Dominar Rygel. Rygel hired him to garrison the Hynerian planets bordering the many Charrid and Charrid occupied worlds. As their governor, O'Donnell has over one hundred and fifty worlds under his command, plus those who have sworn fealty to him personally as head of Human Forces Command. He's trying to garrison planets along trade networks and providing convoy escort groups and anti-raider task forces."

"Marshal O'Donnell is a wealthy and powerful man, and he is the only person who has a sufficient industrial base to provide large, expensive and difficult to make things like warships or high tech ship-killing missiles to his friends or allies."

"Ah! But you are wrong. You bought missiles from a human merchant. I know you did."

I nodded. "We bought fifty missiles from a human smuggler. They were SSM 28, Mod 0 missiles, almost obsolete in the Old Universe. They're worth perhaps 100,000 Imperial Francs apiece back home, we had to pay over five million apiece for them. Twenty five million all together, mostly in local pharmaceuticals. Then we had to upgrade them to Mod 4 missiles which cost us another twenty million or so. And what did we get for our forty five million? A bit more than a salvo worth of missiles for our four missile frigates. Even if we could make more deals like that, they would soon bankrupt us."

I smiled and allowed Zufir to slide onto my lap. "And so that is why we need to be Marshal O'Donnell's allies. We'll leave in less than four weeks."

Four weeks later I was standing on _Austerlitz's_ bridge as we entered the Garden of Galil solar system. Before we had gotten much past the bleak, frozen outer planet we were intercepted by a patrolling warship. Once we identified ourselves, our little force was allowed to proceed. With us was our other cruiser, _Solferino_ and the destroyer _Bethesda_. _Chacal_ , the four missile frigates and our two auxiliaries had been left behind at Forests of Bazil.

This system was much busier than the one we had left. The Delvians on Garden of Galil had hired a human mercenary called Brother Saul to protect them from repeated Charrid raids. Another example of the pacifism of the Seek! We saw one of Brother Saul's cruisers lumbering through the system. It was heavily armed, heavily armored and incredibly slow. Garden of Galil was also a hub for the convoy system that Marshall O'Donnell was running throughout this area of the New Universe. He had escort groups here for protecting convoys and small task forces to hunt down any pirates or raiders in the area. Of course, dozens of merchantmen, both human manned and local swung in orbit around the planet.

"My God!" Darlan gasped. "Is that what I think it is? Frederic! Isn't that in our database?"

I ran the database but was positive what we were seeing. "Yes, sir, a _Warspite_ class battle cruiser is in orbit."

"Not _a_ _Warspite_ , de Gautier, but two." Captain du Glatigny, now the chief of staff for Admiral Darlan, barked.

Sure enough, I could see another of the massive ships swinging around the planet and into our view.

"Battle cruiser? Battle cruiser my ass." said Darlan. "That's no battle cruiser."

Pa'u Zhaan was by my side in an instant. "Is it or is it not a battle cruiser, Frederic? And what is a battle cruiser?"

"A battle cruiser is a ship the size of a battleship and as well armed, but very lightly armored. Weight saved on armor allows more powerful engines so it is much faster than battleships. But they are not a very successful design. If they meet a battleship they can run away, but if they fight, they get destroyed far more often than not. A ship that can run but not fight is a problem as warships are supposed to fight. But the _Warspites_ are different. They're as large, as well armed, and as well armored as a battleship, but as fast as a battle cruiser. It can fight and run and do both better than any other class of ship."

One of the sensor petty officers spoke. "We have their ID beacons. The nearest ship is Human Forces Command Ship _Clontarf_ , and the other is HFCS _Brian Boru_."

"How in the hell did the Marshal get those?" Someone asked.

"By God!" said Commander Marchand. "Those two ships could destroy anything this New Universe has to offer."

The Admiral snorted. "Until they ran out of missiles. Remember, we humans number in the millions here. The Hynerian Empire alone numbers over six hundred billion beings. Six hundred _billion_."

We watched the two massive warships as they slowly swung around the planet. With them were a half a dozen cruisers and some twenty destroyers. Soon we got a call from _Clontarf_. We were advised that we would meet the Marshall's representative on the planet and were given a vector for our orbit.

"Too bad. I'd give my left one to get aboard a _Warspite_ , just to look around." Darlan grumped.

"Left one what?" Pa'u Zhaan asked.


	2. Chapter 2

Once A Warrior King

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I own neither Farscape or Hammer's Slammers, but you already knew that, didn't you? Rating: Pretty much K, or K+. I'll let you know if it changes. Time: Not too long after A Matter of Intelligence.

 **John Crichton**

Delvian buildings were cool both literally and figuratively. The building we sat in was basically one big tree. The floor and lower walls were the trunk, then came the branches which made up the windows and roof. When it was cold, the leaves expanded and wrapped around each other to keep out the weather while specially grown mushroom-like things provided heat. In nice weather, the leaves spread apart and gently fanned the air to cool it. The tree also provided the comfortable chair I sat in and the large table in front of me.

Aeryn and I were at loose ends. The kids were grown. Well, ours were. Moya had a new little daughter, Selic. Ever since Talyn, Moya had been in the lead for an Olympic medal for the Universe's most over protective mother. Living inside a Leviathan that has one hundred percent of her attention on her child is not fun. So, we left Moya and Selic to play in the Hynerian home system and took Rygel's offer to be his representative at these talks. His Amphibiousness does not pay well, but the food on the human flagship we travelled on was pretty good and we got a chance to see some places we hadn't seen before.

There was a commotion at the door and the other humans came in, the French. Excuse me, the Imperial French. Their leader, Admiral Darlan, was a big fellow with longish dark hair with just a bit of grey. He had a tough looking face split by a huge moustache and not helped by a broken nose he'd never bothered to fix. With him were several other officers in navy blue uniforms with gold braid. There were also a couple of officers in a lighter shade of blue. I decided those must be the Welsh who had hooked up with this admiral. They all sat down at a table like ours across from us.

I remembered the Marine and Navy officers I'd seen with my dad when I was younger. This looked like a very tough and salty crew.

Rudy, the head honcho of our delegation, greeted them politely. Rudy was a K'hiff, a race of bipeds that were descended from something resembling an Earth dog. He was my height, but much skinnier and had a coat of fine brown fur. He had been educated by the church and wore human style clothing, in this case a drab, dark blue suit set off by a large, floppy red bow tie. "Good day, Admiral Darlan. I'm Rudyard Kipling Vergaah, the Marshal's representative."

That was true but incomplete. Rudy headed up both O'Donnell's diplomatic corps and his intelligence service. I had never much liked the few spies I'd known, but I did like Rudy.

Rudy went on. "You already know Pa'u Zufir Zhaan who represents the Forests of Bazil. Also with us is Brother Sean, representing Brother Saul whose troops defend this planet." Brother Sean, a well fed Irishman with a ready smile, nodded to the assembled officers across from him. "Then there is Pa'u Olacfoltun, who represents the government of the Garden of Galil." A rather sour looking Delvian male nodded briefly. "Next, and representing Dominar Rygel XVI are Baron Crichton and his wife, Baroness Sun-Crichton." Rudy smiled diplomatically. "I should point out that I represent Marshal O'Donnell solely in his capacity as the head of Human Forces Command and not as the Viceroy of the Hynerian Frontier Province."

"Viceroy O'Donnell?" Darlan said suddenly. "I had understood his title was governor."

Rudy smiled. He enjoyed knowing more than someone else. "You hadn't heard? Marshal O'Donnell has done well as the governor of his province. So well that some Hynerian nobles became jealous. They decided to try to frame him for a bit of financial hanky- panky. Luckily Dominar Rygel has a very effective secret police. They discovered the plot and the miscreants were banished for a period of cycles. Dominar Rygel gave Marshal O'Donnell the title of Viceroy of the Hynerian Frontier Province to show his trust in him."

That was my boy, Buckwheat, all right. I'll bet the fancy new title didn't come with a raise in pay or more power.

Rudy gestured to the dark haired young woman sitting behind him. "I would be remiss in not introducing my aide, Colonel Kathleen O'Donnell. As I'm sure you know, she's a Sebacean who was adopted as a Peacekeeper cadet by Marshal O'Donnell and his wife."

Rudy continued. "Beside the Crichtons are Chiana and Julushko Tunai Fenta Hovalis, who more or less represent themselves."

Chiana cleared her throat loudly. "Rudy! You could at least get my name right."

Rudy looked nonplussed. "I beg your pardon? Are you not Chiana?"

Chiana handed over a data cube. "Please examine my passport."

Rudy quickly scanned it. "My apologies! Admiral, may I introduce Lady Chiana d'Nebari, of the Court of Dominar Rygel XVI."

Chi smiled at everyone. "Hi." She winked at the males across the way.

Rudy couldn't resist. "Has the lovely Joolushko been elevated to the nobility as well?"

Jool shook her head. "No, but you might wish to mention that I have the equivalent of five or six human doctorates."

Admiral Darlan introduced himself, his chief of staff, Captain du Glatigny, and the senior Welshman, Captain ap Owen and all his other officers. One of his officers was a Lieutenant Frederic de Gautier. Rudy had told us that he was Darlan's head of intelligence and a very good one. Rudy had also said that most of his experience was in the field rather than at a desk, but Rudy felt that was a plus when he worked for such a small task force. The lieutenant was a tall, rather slender sort with dark hair and eyes. He was good looking, as Chiana proved by flirting with him across the room. Of course he was male, so Chi would have flirted with him if he'd looked like Rygel's eema.

Darlan smiled and spoke. "Mr. Vergaah. We are very happy to have an opportunity to become Marshal O'Donnell's friends and allies. You'll find that our task force and the Forests of Bazil will be an asset to the Marshall."

Rudy held up his hands. "We are prepared to sign a treaty of alliance with you, Admiral, but only if you agree to move your task force to another solar system."

That provoked the expected explosion of conversation from the French. Everyone on that side was trying to talk at once and so no one could hear anything.

"Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" Rudy called loudly, finally settling them down. "It would be best if I explained everything from the beginning." The French settled down, but kept glaring at us. Rudy smiled and went on. "I'm afraid the problem is that Marshal O'Donnell has been too successful in this New Universe. Allow me to demonstrate." Rudy tapped the computer in front of him and a hologram of this part of the galaxy appeared between the two tables.

"Here, you can see the Artifact, or at least the part in this universe." A bright light lit up at the far left of the holo. "Not too far away is Marshal O'Donnell's base, the Arsenal solar system." Another light. "We're a bit deep in the Uncharted Territories, so we have a second base halfway between Arsenal and the major powers in the New Universe. It's called Base Two, originally enough." A third light lit. "Then we have the more civilized parts of the Uncharted Territories, then the Hynerians, the Delvian worlds over here, the Scarrans and their Charrid allies over there, then the semi-independent Kalish worlds, the Luxan worlds around here, the Ilanic and Scorvian worlds way over there, and then the Royal Planet furthest from the Artifact. There are of course many independent planets scattered about, such as the Forests of Bazil, here, and the Garden of Galil, right here."

"We did not come all this way for a geography lesson." Darlan said shortly.

"No, no, of course not." Rudy said gently. "I merely want to use this to explain our problems to you more easily." Darlan nodded and Rudy went on. "When we came here some years ago, that was, to the Great Powers, an end to itself. They only wanted to get rid of their excess military personnel and little else mattered. Once we left, we'd never be allowed back and no one else would be allowed to enter the New Universe except for a number of diplomatic personnel from the Great Powers to keep an eye on us. A substantial fleet surrounding the Artifact in the Old Universe would keep the status quo intact."

"We know all of this." Darlan said testily.

"Yes, I know you do. However, once here, we found ourselves dealing with a variety of exotic and very wealthy civilizations. Very wealthy civilizations, if I may repeat myself. One of them is the Forests of Bazil, as I'm sure you know. The anti-aging drugs they produce for the Sebacean market are equally effective on humans. For a small proportion of humanity who have serious side effects from conventional human made drugs, they are a godsend. Suddenly it was seen that great amounts of money were to be made if there was trade between the two universes."

"But such trade was illegal." That was the young Lieutenant de Gautier. "At least where the Great Powers are concerned. Legally, no traffic was allowed between the two universes."

Rudy smiled. "And so the laws were changed. Now it is legal for ships from the Old Universe to trade with the New Universe. But, they may only go to Arsenal to trade." Rudy grinned slyly at the other humans. "Although you may be aware that not everyone honors that rule."

Darlan and his boys, who we knew had had dealings with a human weapons smuggler, kept perfect poker faces.

"However, the Marshal is now required to patrol the whole area from the Artifact to Arsenal, and on occasion he must escort ships who have somehow strayed. And we anticipate further changes in the law so that we'll have more human ships to convoy."

"Now we must consider the Marshal's position as the Viceroy."

"I thought you were here representing him in his other capacity." Darlan said quickly.

"Oh, indeed. Indeed. But we must consider his position in all things. As Viceroy he was put in charge of one hundred and fifty one planets on the frontier between the Hynerian Empire and the Charrid worlds of the Scarran Empire. These worlds had long been ravaged by Charrid raiders and were more of a drag on the Hynerians than a help. By garrisoning each world with good troops, setting up orbital defenses, providing convoys for merchantmen, and strong task forces to hunt down any raiders, the Viceroy turned a liability into an asset. A small asset, mind you, but an asset none the less. And an asset that has a great deal of promise."

Rudy grinned. "As we all know, no good deed goes unpunished. Another twenty six planets have "rejoined" the Hynerian Empire's Frontier Province and more that forty wish to "rejoin". This is putting an enormous strain on our resources."

"Rejoining the Empire?" Darlan asked.

"Dominar Rygel X, known as Rygel the Great, made some rather extensive territorial claims back in his day. Mostly they were ignored by the Charrids and others. But Dominar Rygel XVI is quite happy to use these to expand his domains. His appetites are quite remarkable."

Tell me something I didn't know about old Spanky.

"Then we have the Marshal's obligations as head of Human Forces Command. He has made agreements with many worlds, such as Garden of Galil, and accepted fealty over others, such as Jolo. The purpose of this is to set up bases to protect the trade routes in this end of the galaxy. The Eidelon Peace between the Peacekeepers and Scarrans is holding, but there are problems. The number of remaining Eidelons is small for the task at hand and it appears that the Eidelons think in terms of centuries or perhaps millennia. So, in a thousand years, we may all be jolly, friendly people, but not now. Many Charrids have left Scarran Imperial service to go raiding. So for that matter have some Scarrans. The Peacekeepers, booted out of the Hynerian Empire and Delvia itself, are fracturing. It isn't just the Scorpius and Grayza factions, either. Luxan warlords, no longer fearing a Scarran invasion, are sending out raiders as well. The Scorvians and Ilanics seem to have been reduced to shooting at everyone. Even the Kalish seem to have started raiding. And there are the Tavleks, Zenetian pirates and many others who infest this area and make life miserable for one and all. We don't need to mention the many humans who also make our lives miserable."

Rudy glanced over to the French who were still staring at us coldly. "Every time we set up a base and begin escorting convoys, we get embassies from every planet that can get a ship to us asking for our help."

"All the more reason to keep the valuable Forests of Bazil well protected by my task force." Darlan snapped.

"If there were not an even more valuable planet that need protecting. The Forests of Bazil can be protected by Brother Saul's ships with some occasional help from us." Rudy countered.

That got Darlan's attention. "Explain, Mr. Vergaah, about this more valuable planet."

Rudy had him hooked.

"Have you ever heard of the Jezzail system?"

The question sent Darlan's officers to work on their computers. Everyone seemed to be shaking their heads. Finally, "I'm afraid not." Darlan admitted.

"It's far from here." Rudy tapped his computer and a light started blinking on the star map. "It's beyond the Scorvian and Ilanic sector. In fact it's been cut off for some decades by their war. The last ship from there arrived…" Rudy checked "…forty two years ago."

"The Jezzailians are a hive race, very rare in any universe. They're quite technologically advanced, especially in nano-technology and genetic engineering. They seem to be rather lacking in curiosity, though. They don't go out into the galaxy to trade although they have built interstellar ships. They wait for outsiders to come trade with them. If no one comes to trade, they don't seem to mind at all."

"You want us to protect the trade with the Jezzailains." That wasn't a question from Darlan, it was a statement and a correct statement at that. "Do you realize how impossibly far that solar system is from any HFC base?"

"Of course we do, which is why part of your job will be to help us set up a base or two between here and there. In fact we have your main base picked out. Do you know where New Gotland is?"

More frantic searching of French databases before, "No. We know of no such world in this universe."

Rudy smiled and nodded his head. "You are probably familiar with their leader, Gustav the Fifth, formerly King of Gotland back in the Old Universe. He was your ally. When The Wars ended, he was deposed and sought service with Human Forces Command. However, some one of his enemies paid off the captain of the ship he and his people were on." Rudy checked again. "Ah, yes. The _Manchuria Maru_. The ship's captain took the ship to a planet in the middle of nowhere and thoroughly sabotaged the ship's engines. He then took off in an FTL tender. King Gustav occupies part of the planet and has named it after his old home. Unfortunately he shares the planet with some Peacekeepers. Abandoned Peacekeepers, apparently. We don't know which faction their commander supports, but he gets no aid from other Peacekeepers."

"Many years ago, the former ruler of New Gotland, then called Fezzan, the Exarch, hired a band of Luxans and some non-Peacekeeper Sebacean mercenaries to help crush his opponents. Then his hired troops wanted more money. And more money. So the Exarch gathered all the loot he could and fled. His successor did the same thing. The planet has been fought over for the last fifty or sixty cycles and has been nearly wrecked."

The French huddled briefly. "How strong is this King Gustav?"

"He told Baron Crichton that he has ten thousand men and that the _Manchuria Maru_ was crammed full of war materials. This is a bit of an exaggeration. He has a regiment of some four thousand people. However, the regiment is composed of soldiers from his old divisional storm battalions, his Shock Regiments and his Special Operations Groups. He also has a few hundred mercenaries. His troops are really quite good."

Rudy consulted his computer again. "As far as material goes, he has sufficient infantry weapons. For artillery, he has half a dozen light field guns. Armor is mostly lightly armored scout cars, perhaps fifteen or so, mounting nothing more than a 3 centimeter tri-barrel power gun. He does have three battle tanks. Lastly he has four aerospace fighters. They're based on the _Manchuria Maru_ and rarely, if ever, leave orbit."

"As far as the _Manchuria Maru_ being stuffed with war materials, I'm afraid that's an exaggeration as well. King Gustav has been able to get some of the planet's factories back into operation and is producing some weapons, munitions and equipment."

"Another four thousand or so of King Gustav's subjects are civilians. Most are the families of his troops, some are not. Another two thousand are former members of his government. Consequently, he has an excellent intelligence service, good police and internal security forces, and a wonderful propaganda department. I also understand he has a magnificent opera company and a truly spectacular symphony orchestra."

Darlan was looking angry. "He has no functional ships at all? No space based defenses? Nothing at all that could fight off a raiding space ship?"

Rudy sighed and nodded. "I'm afraid he has none of these things."

"And you want us to become your allies, base ourselves on nearly defenseless New Gotland , and escort convoys to a planet that no one has heard from in forty years?"

"Quite correct, Admiral Darlan."

"I should like to discuss your proposal with my officers." Darlan said coldly and walked out before Rudy could reply.

He was back in ten minutes. "I would require a great financial incentive to move my operations. I would need a subsidy equal to my current income from Forests of Bazil for a period of ten Earth years."

Rudy slowly shook his head. "The Marshal is aware that you will have a financial loss, at least initially. I should think that a subsidy of one year equal to half of your present income would suffice. Remember that as an ally, you would be able to draw on the resources of Human Forces Command, which you cannot do now, no matter how much you earn."

Darlan shook his head vigorously. "A year? It will take us that long to set up our operations and make an initial voyage to this Jezzail."

And so the bargaining was off and running. About the time they got to trading statistics on the futures market for Delvian pharmaceuticals, I looked over at Aeryn. She was about to fall asleep from boredom. Me too. I rose, "Sorry, folks, but Dominar Rygel has instructed me not to commit the Hynerian Empire to any financial obligations in this matter. You don't need me here now."

Actually what Sparky had said was, "Crichton, I know you'll frell things up if you do anything, so if you see anything that might cause a problem, let me know and I'll handle it."

Aeryn and I left. Not too surprisingly Chiana left, too. And so did Jool. I would have thought that she'd want to gather data for her next Ph.D. thesis. Something like, "A Statistical Analysis of Boring Human Meetings."

When we got outside Aeryn spoke to Chi. "Why exactly are you two here?"

Chi smiled slyly. "Don't you trust us, Aer?"

Aeryn just snorted.

Jool spoke up before something bad happened. "A new Scarran biological weapon has gotten loose, what with the Charrids deserting in droves and even Scarran Imperial units going rogue. It's deadly, in fact, it almost killed me. But there's a drink on New Gotland called tingue tea that cures it. I've analyzed the molecule that counter-acts the bio weapon and it's very complex. It'll be cheaper in the short run to buy tingue tea on New Gotland until the Delvians can grow the molecule in commercial quantities."

"And Chiana is with you because of her well known generous nature?" Aeryn asked sarcastically.

"Yeah! That's exactly why I'm with Jool. Plus the fact that I'm her friend."

Jool smiled and shook her head. "Chi thinks we'll find a lost treasure on New Gotland."

"Jool! Shush!" Pip said with a glare.

"Chiana, I've told you we'll need John and Aeryn's help, that is, if there really is a treasure."

"And whose pocket did you find the treasure map in?" Aeryn asked, still sarcastically.

Chi stamped her foot. "I got it square and fair. And as far as I'm concerned, I'll do this on my own. I don't need you three. And I'll laugh and laugh when I'm rich and you're not." With that, she walked off.

"How long do you think it'll take her to come back?" Aeryn asked.

"Not long." Jool said with a smile. "She had no breakfast this morning and she has no currency. It's lunch time. Shall we eat over there at that nice open air café?"

Aeryn laughed. "Where she can see us?"

Jool was right. Chi forgave us and allowed Jool to buy her lunch.

When we showed up the next morning we found that the financial end of the deal had closed the night before. Next up, apparently, was what kind of weaponry Admiral Darlan and his merry men were going to get.

"In addition to restocking our magazines and our holdings of spare parts, the upgrading of all of our ships, we'll need a minimum of two heavy cruisers. I'd suggest two of the new _Shinano_ class, although something larger would work as well."

Rudy smiled at him. "Why not ask for the two _Warspites_?" When Darlan made no reply, Rudy went on. "The reason we need your help, and are willing to generously support you, is that we're short of ships and personnel. For that matter, I can't see how you could man two heavy cruisers with the personnel you have."

Darlan smiled back. "I have extra personnel who came aboard _Wessex Lady_ and _Amarillo_. For the rest, I can man my two light cruisers with skeleton crews and use them to defend New Gotland."

"What part of we have no extra ships did I fail to explain to you?" Rudy asked in an exaggeratedly friendly manner.

"The Marshal has well over a hundred battleships. Do you mean to tell me that a man that powerful cannot spare two heavy cruisers?"

Rudy sighed dramatically. "Marshal O'Donnell has slightly over one hundred battleships. Of those, some fifty are modern, fast units that can stand in the line of battle. Thirty two of those are dedicated by treaty to the service of Dominar Rygel. That's the First Striking Fleet. Since all warships need to be maintained and upgraded from time to time, we need a total of thirty six modern battleships dedicated to the Dominar so we'll always have that thirty two. That leaves us slightly over a dozen for the Marshall's other duties. That's the Second Striking Fleet. That leaves some fifty other battleships. These consist of old, obsolescent battleships, lightly armored battle cruisers, light battleships, pocket battleships, second class battleships, system defense battleships that are heavily armed and armored but slow, slow, slow, in short, anything that really isn't up to facing a large determined enemy ship. These are formed into two-battleship divisions and form the basis for many of our task forces. These have to cover an enormous volume of space and nearly a thousand solar systems."

Darlan shrugged. "You act as if every enemy ship in the New Universe was a _Warspite_ class. The oldest, slowest, most poorly armed and armored human battleship could destroy ninety nine percent of the raiders they'd face without even getting their paint singed."

And they were off. I managed to listen for another half an arn until I got really bored. Aeryn, on the other hand, was fascinated. That's my girl! Show her a pretty warship and she'll be putty in your hands. Neither Jool nor Pip had shown up so I excused myself and took a walk.

I wandered around for a couple of arns until I got hungry. Since there were humans stationed on this planet, I found that there were several little cafes that served human style food. Sort of. I stood outside one and someone called my name. "Baron Crichton?"


	3. Chapter 3

Once A Warrior King

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I own neither Farscape or Hammer's Slammers, but you already knew that, didn't you? Rating: Pretty much K, or K+. I'll let you know if it changes. Time: Not too long after A Matter of Intelligence.

 **John Crichton**

I turned to find myself facing another human. From the neck up, he looked like a rock star: Curly hair down over his collar, sideburns down to his jaw, a gold earring in one ear and a killer tan. Below the neck, he was all military. His uniform was dark blue with scarlet cuffs and scarlet piping on his jacket. His shoulder boards were gold and across his breast he had four medals. Oddly, he was standing at attention. I nodded.

"Allow me to introduce myself. I am Captain Pierre de Brun, First Regiment of Grenadiers, Imperial Guard."

"Relax, Captain, I don't even outrank my wife. And I thought the French Empire had gone out of business."

He shrugged and then smiled. "As long as Emperor Charles has one follower, the Empire remains. And he has several thousands of followers in this New Universe."

"I was just about to have lunch, Captain de Brun. Can you recommend a good place that has human food?"

He thought for a moment. "The one on the corner is quite good." He pointed to a café a few steps away. "Should you invite me to join you, I could have a drink with you. Otherwise, I'm on duty. One can hardly have a meal without wine."

"You _are_ French." I said, heading for the café. "Come on."

De Brun ordered a green Delvian wine and something made from eggs. It might have been an omelet as made by Delvians. They had a Dagwood sandwich on the menu and I couldn't resist.

"It is my understanding, Baron Crichton…"

"Call me John. Dominar Rygel hands out titles instead of using money. I hardly ever use the title."

De Brun nodded. "Dominar Rygel is said to be somewhat tight fisted. But, please, you must call me Pierre."

"You're here with Admiral Darlan?" I asked. I was wondering why he'd stopped me.

"I'm in command of the marines on the cruiser _Solferino_."

"My dad was a Marine, back on Earth. In this Universe, of course."

"We have heard of you. I am curious. The Earth of this New Universe is over a thousand years behind us, is it not?"

"You have no idea how old that makes me feel, Pierre."

"Did you live in the era of Napoleon the Great? The first Emperor of France?"

Great! An Emperor groupie. "No, he died about a hundred and fifty years before he was born. I missed his nephew, too. During all of my life, France was a republic."

"One hopes…" He stopped for a second. "But you are an American, are you not? Great friends of France, in both our universes."

We had a drink to the friendship of our two peoples.

One thing about the US Marines, they remember their history, and I had heard plenty of it growing up. So, I was able to tell Pierre all about Belleau Wood and Sergeant Dan Daley. When I was done, I asked, "Have you ever been to Earth?" I had always been curious about what Earth a thousand years in the future was like.

He shook his head. "My cousin, a naval officer, almost made it to Earth. He got as far as Earth's Moon, but ran into a most charming young lady at Lunagrad."

"My father went to the Moon. He was one of the first humans to do so."

Pierre tried to look impressed and almost did. "Earth's Moon?" He stopped for a second. "But wait. We may have something on the ship that would interest you."

Several arns later, I went back to our rooms. Aeryn was already there, laying on our bed and reading something. "How did the meeting go?" I asked.

"Very interesting. Rudy gave me an intelligence briefing on Darlan's forces with some information on him and his senior officers. I'm surprised humans let this sort of information out." Compared to the Peacekeepers the old Soviet KGB were a band of incurable chatterboxes. "You got a book, too?"

I laid down beside Aeryn. "I met an officer from Darlan's command, a Captain de Brun, who runs the marines on _Solferino_."

She moved over and rested her head on my chest. I put my arm around her and began stroking her hair. "And he gave you a book?"

I showed her the book. She read the title slowly. Over the years she'd had little chance to read human languages. "A Tourist's Guide to Earth's Moon. You found this interesting?"

"Sort of, Aeryn. I've always wondered about the two universes. Is the other one just a thousand years ahead of this one, or are they two different universes. I'm sure that the Artifact uses wormholes somehow and wormholes connect all space and time, and also some really weird places."

"And this book shows you…?" She left the question hanging.

"The best places to eat, drink and party on the Moon." I flipped open the book. "They also show you the cultural sights, such as the Tranquility City Museum of Lunar History. This is a picture of the famous statue of the first two men to land on the Moon, Neil Armstrong and Gus Grissom. Next to the statue is a monument listing all the people who landed on the Moon from 1969 to 2042. Last, but not least is a plaque that the original Apollo 11 astronauts left behind. It's says, "We came in peace for all mankind," and it's signed by President Hubert Humphrey."

"And this means…?"

"Neil Armstrong was the first man on our moon, but in my universe Gus Grissom died in an accident on Earth. He never went to the Moon, and Hubert Humphrey was never President of the US. And, lastly, if you check the names of people who went to the Moon, there's no one named Crichton. My dad never went. And if he never went to the Moon, I'd probably have never gotten interested in space. And the John Crichton in that universe never found a beautiful Sebacean woman to marry, and the beautiful Sebacean woman lived her whole life as a Peacekeeper and never became more. That sucks."

Surprisingly, Aeryn laughed. "Now let me tell you what really happened. Your father passed up his chance to be an astronaut because he found out early that his wife had cancer. She was cured and they lived a long and happy life. Their son, named John, was so motivated by his father's decision that he decided he'd become an astronaut. One day while he was flying in space, a huge wormhole opened and out flew a very advanced spaceship flown by a very beautiful, intelligent, courageous, determined, talented, well trained…"

I laughed and held up my hands in mock surrender. "And what did this perfect woman do?"

"Oh, she wasn't perfect. She was very afraid of her emotions. But this fellow named John guided her back to his base on Earth. His government was very frightened of this woman, but John befriended her and showed her how she could become more and he showed his government that they didn't need to fear her. Because she looked human, she was able to marry John and live happily on Earth for the rest of their lives." When she was done, she gave me a kiss.

"And that's what you think happened?"

She nodded, looking very serious. "As you've said, we were fated to be together. So all of the infinite John Crichtons and all the infinite Aeryn Suns in all the infinite universes all lived happily ever after."

Well, you can't argue with logic like that.

When we got to the meeting the next morning, Rudy told us that the last of the details had been ironed out, so there should be nothing left but the signing of a treaty. That didn't happen.

"Now we need to discuss your arrangements with King Gustav." Darlan announced when the meeting began.

Rudy looked surprised. "I think that is between Gustav and us, Admiral."

"I respectfully disagree, Mr. Vergaah. Admittedly, the bulk of our experience is in space based operations, but we have some knowledge of planet based warfare." I had noticed that my pal, Captain de Brun, had joined Darlan's group as well as a woman who Rudy had told me was Darlan's marine commander and a hell of a lot older than she looked.

Rudy sighed. "Please continue, Admiral."

"I need a secure base for my task force. You should provide King Gustav another fifteen or twenty tanks and some infantry fighting vehicles; enough artillery for a battalion; enough aerospace craft to form a complete squadron and at least three system defense boats."

"And how would King Gustav man all of this extra equipment, Admiral?"

"For the time being, he can give up some infantry units to get greater firepower. In the long run, he needs more personnel, as I do."

"Aha!" Rudy said with a wide smile. "So this is about your personnel needs?

Darlan shook his head. "This is about providing a secure base for the convoy system the Marshal wishes to set up. Even with the additional equipment you provide King Gustav, I'll need to keep half my ships at New Gotland to protect it. But, while I don't have your sources of information, I do know that back in the Old Universe, the governments of both France and Gotland have passed laws discriminating against anyone who supported the former governments of those planets. A few shiploads of volunteers from Gotland would allow King Gustav to set up a powerful planet based defense and put in place an orbital defenses backed by missile boats. A shipload of volunteers from France would permit me to expand my forces."

Rudy and Kathleen put their heads together for a few seconds. "Agreed, Admiral Darlan. Do you think we could sign a treaty now?"

 **Frederick de Gautier**

"We did get about what we thought we'd get, Admiral."

Darlan shrugged. "One always hopes one will do better, but that Mr. Vergaah is a very good negotiator."

"Still, sir, we've managed to keep _Amarillo_ on the Forests of Bazil to Garden of Galil run, with no taxes on her and no charge for convoy services by Brother Saul. That's worth more than any subsidy we might have gotten as it has no ending date."

"We didn't get a heavy cruiser." The Admiral said grumpily.

I sighed to myself. Darlan wanted a heavy cruiser badly. "We never expected to get one, sir. Mr. Vergaah was right. The Marshall is over committed. There was no chance we'd get a cruiser of any sort. What we got was every one of our ships, including the _Lady_ filled up with missiles and spare parts, not to mention some new repair shops for the _Lady_. Plus, _l'Insurgente_ will be completely rebuilt, and we'll get a brand new heavy destroyer. A destroyer with sixteen missile tubes will be quite an addition to the task force. And we get six new missile frigates. With our existing frigates, plus a destroyer, we'll be able to defend New Gotland quite nicely. And we'll have three system defense boats. Since they aren't FTL craft, King Gustav should have no trouble crewing them."

"Assuming we can talk King Gustav into hosting us. He had a reputation back in the Old Universe for being stubborn. Pig headed even."

I shrugged. Today, Darlan seemed to be determined to find the worst in everything. "Baron Crichton said that the King offered his services to the Marshall. Why would he then turn down a shipload of war materials, a promise of more and a promise of more Gotlanders?"

The Admiral looked at me sulkily. He didn't like being jollied out of his bad moods. I continued. "While the _Warspites_ and the rest of the fleet will be heading all the way to the Royal Planet, Mr. Vergaah and Colonel O'Donnell will be going with us in _Wasp_ , 56, a new armored cruiser. Once word gets around that we have powerful friends, few people in that part of this galaxy will want to take us on."

Darlan nodded. "You're right as usual, Frederic. I worry too much, I suppose. But you must be on your way to Karraid and I must return to Forests of Bazil with Brother Saul's force to arrange for the handover."

I saluted and left.

Karraid was my least favorite planet. Technically a moon of a gas giant, Karraid was a place where one could buy or sell anything with no questions asked. Karraid itself was cold and had a methane atmosphere. Since no one came there with the intent of staying any longer than it took to make some fast money, construction had been shoddy and maintenance was poor. Karraid's installations were cold and stank of methane.

I stood on the bridge of _Bethesda_ looking at the moon we were rapidly approaching. "Lieutenant de Gautier, we sent in a recon drone ahead of us. Since you're an intelligence officer, I thought you'd like a look." That was the captain, Commander Thomas.

I looked at the feed from the drone. "That's a human ship in high orbit." Thomas just nodded. "She's bigger than we are, sir, but with fewer missile tubes. I only count eight. The Wends, Tenochtitlan and Majuba all built similar ships. She's either a heavily armed merchantman or a warship with lots of cargo space. Take your pick."

Thomas grunted and I moved to the next ship. " _Quelle enmerdment_! That's a Charrid corsair. A big one at that."

"Take a close look, de Gautier."

I did. "She's got a hole right through her! I can see crewmembers working on her. She's been in a hell of a fight and was lucky to get here. Maybe we'll get lucky and the damned ship will blow up," Charrids were the most numerous and worst raiders in this New Universe.

I switched to the next ship. "A Peacekeeper, and a small one at that. It looks like one of their scouts." Peacekeeper scout ships were much like our own. They were small, very fast, had excellent sensors and minimal weapons.

I checked a readout. "None of them is showing an ID beacon."

"Neither are we, Lieutenant." Thomas said. "There's another ship in orbit, but it's on the other side of Karraid. It's a Luxan and about as big as we are. With any luck, he'll stay on the other side of Karraid." We had fought and destroyed a Luxan assault piercer. The Luxans were said to have long memories.

"With your permission, Captain, I'll be off." Thomas nodded and I headed for the boat bay and a trip down to Karraid.

I talked with several ship chandlers and a banker, being careful not to mention that we were moving our base of operations. Everything was for sale here, including information. Especially information. Then I went to Farro's.

Farro's is the best bar on Karraid and would have been a good bar almost anywhere else. It was always one of the bright spots of my too frequent visits to Karraid.

I wore a standard ship's jumpsuit instead of my uniform and wore a long overcoat over that. This made me look more anonymous, kept me warmer and concealed the machine pistol I carried. As I walked into Farro's, I checked the other customers. Only three, all Peacekeeper officers, two women and a man.

Farro was behind the bar and he smiled when he saw me. The size of those fangs had put me off when I first met him, but I knew him now.

"Good afternoon." I said and sat at a barstool.

Farro looked to his right and nodded. I checked the mirror behind the bar. One of the Peacekeepers was coming over. She was tall and slender with long legs, slim hips, small breasts and a face one would call pretty rather than beautiful. Her blonde hair was worn in a long pigtail. Her eyes were green. She didn't smile.

"Another raslak, Farro, and whatever the human here is drinking." She tossed some coins on the bar.

"A pale ale, Farro." I said. I turned to her. "And you are?"

"Senior Lieutenant Lyssa Tarpa. I'm the commander of the Peacekeeper ship in orbit. You're off the human warship that just made orbit?"

Word did travel fast on Karraid. "Frederic de Gautier. My ship is _Bethesda_ , 12, Admiral Darlan's task force, Human Forces Command."

"You saw the Charrid corsair in orbit, Captain de Gautier?"

I nodded. She had taken me for the ship's captain. I didn't disabuse her. "Hard to miss."

"Your ship could destroy that mother frelling Charrid, could it not?"

I nodded.

She waited for me to say more, but I didn't. She went on. "If you did destroy the Charrid, you'd have one less of the bastards to deal with. And the Peacekeepers would be grateful."

"Which Peacekeepers would that be, Senior Lieutenant Tarpa? The Scorpius faction? The Grayza faction? The Control Faction? The Fleet Faction? Someone else? Making one faction happy would doubtlessly upset the others. We have…" I stopped to try to find the right word "…correct relations with all the Peacekeeper factions. We'd like to keep it that way."

"None of our factions would object to the destruction of a Charrid ship."

"So you say. But I have no authorization to start a war with an unknown Charrid group. That ship could have friends. Lots and lots of heavily armed friends."

"If that Charrid manages to get itself repaired it'll destroy my ship. Not the two human ships, you're too well armed, nor the Luxan ship. Plus the powers that be on Karraid would object to anything but a Peacekeeper ship being destroyed. All sorts of people need places like Karraid."

I shrugged. "Doubtlessly Karraid would object if we destroyed a good Charrid customer of theirs."

Farro spoke up. "The Charrid has engine damage. They had enough loot to start some makeshift repairs to their ship, but they won't be in any shape to catch anyone. They probably won't have the engines fixed at all for a solar day or two. Why don't you just move your ship, Lieutenant Tarpa?"

She glowered at Farro, who just smiled back at her. "My ship is being used as a courier. We were told to wait here in the precise orbit we're in until another ship shows up. That ship will only enter the far reaches of this solar system and broadcast a tight beam transmission to us. If we're not exactly where we're supposed to be, we'll miss the message." She rested her hand on my thigh. "I can be very good to you, Captain."

I moved her hand. What a shame that these things kept happening to me. "And I have a commander who can be very unpleasant to me." I had gotten a look at her two companions while we chatted. "Your officers are quite young."

The hand moved back to my thigh. "If that's what you like, it'll be no problem."

I removed her hand again and shook my head. "I'm just curious as to why your officers are so young." She glared at me and stalked off. She gathered her two officers and left the bar.

"Have some pilla nuts." Farro pushed a bowl towards me.

I palmed the message cube from the bowl. "Very good. Your usual amount will be in your account. Plus a bonus if there's anything interesting on this."

"She's going to die, you know. The ship she's been waiting for is four solar days overdue. I'm pretty sure that it's not coming, but she's too stubborn or too dedicated to move her ship out of orbit."

I gave an exaggerated sigh. "And you know this because..?"

He tapped his ears. "My race can hear and see better than any other race around. That's why you pay me, after all." I made no reply, but Farro kept talking. "Her officers are all cadets. Her crewmembers are all techs. Her Sector Commander is trying to remain neutral in the struggle between the various Peacekeeper factions. Consequently, he gets nothing from anyone. But, even with a veteran crew she couldn't fight off that Charrid and the bastards won't pass up the chance to kill some Peacekeepers."

I changed the subject. "Are those Luxan brothers still offering to buy your bar?"

Farro gave me a long look. "Yes. But why would I want to sell?"

"We're moving to a planet called New Gotland. Ever hear of it?"

Farro shook his huge furry head. "Never."

"Used to be called Fezzan. Now it's run by a human called King Gustav. Admiral Darlan is moving his base there to run convoys to a planet called Jezzail."

"Jezzail!" Farro sounded surprised. "That's way out beyond the Ilanics and Scorvians. There is money to be made, though, if you live."

"I can get you passage for you and your sisters on a ship called _Whistling Dixie_ , Captain Scarlet O'Hara. "

"Again, why would I want to sell?"

"Because you're making more money from me than you are from this bar. There's a place on New Gotland called the New Market. It's kind of like here. Everyone comes from all over the planet to buy and sell. The only difference is that King Gustav has efficient police to keep order. Plus it isn't always cold and it doesn't smell of methane."

Farro stroked his long furry jaw. "I'd need to move all my stock. That'll cost more than just four passages. And I'll need to rent a new place on this New Gotland. Then there's a business license, bribes perhaps. We don't get that many humans in here. I'd need different drinks and food. It could get expensive."

"I suppose a loan would be in order. You are a valuable intelligence source."

"An outright subsidy would be better. I'm taking all the risk here, you know."

I left a half an hour later. I hadn't spent too much of the Admiral's funds and I had one of my best intelligence sources coming with us.

Once back aboard _Bethesda_ I reported to the bridge and Captain Thomas.

"A boat just came up from Karraid to the Peacekeeper ship, De Gautier. And that Luxan is moving. It looks like he's going to change his orbit to match everyone else's. I'll be happy to get clear of him and that damned Charrid."

Before I could say a word, two missiles shot past us. One exploded ahead of the Charrid by a few dozen kilometers. A nuclear explosion in space that far away wouldn't damage the Charrid's ship, but those who were working outside on the hull protected only by spacesuits would die of radiation poisoning unless they got immediate treatment. The other missile turned away from the Charrid and shot out of range of our sensors. The missiles were followed by volleys of frag cannon fire shooting past us and hitting the Charrid raider. Seconds later I felt a pulse weapon burst slam into our ship.

Immediately, alarms went off and the bridge turned into the controlled chaos of combat.

"Who the hell is shooting at us?" Captain Thomas screamed.

He got an answer at once. "The Charrid. But that Luxan is using us for cover, keeping us between him and the Charrid until he's ready to fire. The Charrid is shooting at both of us, but he's only hitting us!" We took another hit and an automated message blared, "Hull breach. Compartment 2 Alpha 17. Sealant deployed."

Thomas yelled. "Open fire on the Charrid, but keep an eye on the Luxan." Before he'd finished the sentence I heard our directed energy mounts start to cycle and then open fire.

Over the noise I could hear the gunnery officer. "We're too damned close to use our ship killers. The missiles are too close to arm before they're past that bastard. Our energy weapons aren't meant to kill warships. We're not doing much damage." That was punctuated by two hits on us almost simultaneously.

"Try using the anti-missile missiles. They'll arm at this range." Someone screamed.

Short range anti-missile missiles shot out at the Charrid. I counted a dozen that flew right past the other ship without exploding. We took another hit. This one knocked out our power for a second. Then a two kiloton warhead exploded just behind the Charrid. The next two missiles hit him.

"He's breaking in two!" someone yelled.

The Charrid ship stopped shooting. So did we. But the Luxan ship came out from behind us and fired volley after volley into the wrecked Charrid's hull.

"Damage report!" cried Captain Thomas. I listened in to the reports from all over the ship. We had taken damage, but we could still move and shoot. Thomas directed his damage control teams while the Luxan warship continued to blow the Charrid into smaller and smaller pieces. Finally, he ceased fire.

"Incoming message from the Luxan ship, Captain." That was the comm officer. "And he's using an Imperial French code. It's an old one, but we can decipher it. He wants a visual."

Thomas broke off his orders. "Put him on the view screen. How the hell did he get access to one of our codes? Even an old one?" Thomas glared at me, but I had no answer.

The Luxan captain appeared in the screen. He was a stocky sort, with bright ribbons in his facial tentacles, wearing a red uniform with white fur trim and a green sash about his ample waist. For a moment, all I could think of was Father Christmas. "It's a good day to kill Charrids, human. We shot a hole through that bastard four solar days ago and tracked him here. He won't raid any more Luxan worlds." He paused for a second, "I hope you do not feel that my tactic of firing from behind you was dishonorable?"

Captain Thomas's face was turning red and he was about to let the Luxan captain know exactly what he thought about his tactics. I quickly stepped in front of the view screen. "Any day is a good day to kill Charrids We would have done exactly the same if our positions were reversed. We were planning a little something ourselves for that Charrid."

The Luxan looked disappointed. "All is well then, human. Fare well." The transmission ended.

Captain Thomas blew up. "Who in the hell do you think you are, de Gautier? I'm the captain of this ship, not you!" Thomas got control of himself. More calmly he went on. "Why did you do that?"

"My sincere apologies, Captain Thomas, but Luxans have a very complex honor code. If we had found his tactics to be dishonorable, he'd have insisted we fight him, to prove that he's an honorable person. If we refused to fight him, we'd be dishonorable and fair game for any Luxan. His ship is designed for close range energy weapon duels. Ours are not. We depend on our longer ranged missiles to kill our enemies. We'd have lost."

Thomas glowered at me. "Very well, de Gautier, but in the future…"

Captain Thomas was cut off by the communications officer. "Incoming transmission, sir. The Peacekeeper captain wants to talk to… Captain de Gautier." The comm officer was struggling to suppress a smile.

"It'd better not be in one of our codes!" Thomas barked.

The comm officer said it wasn't and I found myself looking into the eyes of Senior Lieutenant Lyssa Tarpa. "You could have told me that you and the Luxan were planning to ambush that Charrid bastard. My ship could have helped." She said coldly.

I shrugged, but smiled at her. "Your ship could hardly have made a difference. Besides, we humans like surprises. That is, as long as we're the ones doing the surprising."

She gave me a long look and then smiled at me. "Too bad. You could have been…interesting." The comm ended.

"De Gautier, what the hell was that? Are you making plans with that…No, never mind. Just get the hell off my bridge and stay off. Now!"

I got off the bridge. Later, I discretely talked to the sensor officer and got copies of everything we'd picked up in our battle with the Charrid. It was mostly what I'd expected. I did notice that the Peacekeeper had switched on what I took to be her fire control sensors. They came on line just as the Charrid was blown in half. Tarpa would have fought with us had there been time. As she had said, "Interesting."

The unknown human ship had tracked all of the other ships, but had made no move to intervene in the battle. That was as I had expected. However, the spatial defense batteries on Karraid had remained inactive. That was interesting as Karraid had a reputation for protecting its customers from reprisals. Was that reputation over stated? Or had the Luxan paid someone off to look the other way while he shot a customer to bits? All intelligence is of value to someone, but as we were leaving this area of the galaxy, not to us. Who might be interested in this?


	4. Chapter 4

Once A Warrior King

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I own neither Farscape or Hammer's Slammers, but you already knew that, didn't you? Rating: Pretty much K, or K+. I'll let you know if it changes. Time: Not too long after A Matter of Intelligence.

 **John Crichton**

"May I tempt you with a bit more chocolate ice cream, John?"

Before I could reply to Rudy, Aeryn took the last two scoops of ice cream. Then she looked at me and smiled. I wisely said nothing.

"I can order more ice cream from the wardroom pantry." Rudy said. He was smiling too.

I shook my head. Rudy had taken over the wardroom of the _Wasp_ for his private dining room. The officers of the ship might be a little bent out of shape, but Rudy knew his business. He had settled more disputes over friendly bowls of ice cream than anyone else ever had at formal negotiations.

"Why are we looking over these other planets?" Jool asked. "I thought it was determined that the new base would be set up on New Gotland." Pip, who had her face in a bowl of ice cream, muttered something too.

"My dear Joolushko, Admiral Darlan's primary base will be at New Gotland. But new Gotland is far from our nearest base at Garden of Galil. If we had a base something like halfway between Garden of Galil and New Gotland where convoys could stop, it would make things much easier."

"This Your You Salem," Jool said slowly, "is a human settled planet?"

"Jerusalem." Rudy corrected. "And it has been settled by humans. To be precise, by the followers of Pope Demosthenes II of the Reformed Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church. They left the Old Universe to find religious freedom, which may mean many things. But, I fear our intelligence on this world is very poor, thus our trip here."

"They named the planet Jerusalem, Rudy? Back home that was part of one of Earth's largest open air shooting galleries. And how do you get to be a reformed orthodox church. Isn't that a contradiction in terms?"

Rudy spread his hands, indicating helplessness. "As I said, our intelligence is poor. We'll find out more when we land at the space port tomorrow."

The next morning we found that the "space port" was a muddy field surrounded by woods. One shabby wooden cabin contained all of the support functions of the space port. Aeryn and I sat in one of _Wasp's_ landers with a bored pilot and two slightly less bored gunners. Rudy and de Gautier, who seemed to be Darlan's diplomat in addition to his chief of intelligence had gone off to parlay, leaving us behind. I didn't mind. Even if I'd wanted to contribute to the fun and diplomacy, my orders from Spanky were to do nothing. After years of being chased around outer space, that I could handle.

Aeryn was a bird of a different plumage to use one of my dad's old pal's expressions. She stalked up and down the narrow deck of the lander like a caged…Like a caged Peacekeeper, actually.

"The town is that way, right?" She asked the pilot, who nodded. She turned to me. "I'm going to see what's in that frelling town. Rygel did ask us to look around."

I shook my head. "Basically, His Froggyness told us not to do anything. And Rudy told us to stay here."

Aeryn snorted. "Frell that." She looked at me, daring me to try to stop her. I knew better. I just smiled and said, "If they have any tourist shops, I could use a tee shirt with something cute on it."

She didn't even look at me but stomped out of the lander and squelched through the mud. "I wear a size large, please." I called after her.

I wandered up front to talk to the pilot. I had found that 30th century humans were fascinated, and appalled, at the idea of flying in space without anti-matter engines, artificial gravity, and all the other things the Farscape module hadn't had when I left Earth.

I was halfway through a good story about how Yuri Gagarin had orbited the Earth when de Gautier stuck his head in. "Baron Crichton, I'm afraid your wife has gotten herself arrested."

"Oh crap!" I checked Wynona and headed for the hatch. De Gautier put out a hand to stop me. "Leave your sidearm behind. The authorities won't let you keep it and we don't have time to argue with them."

We headed through the woods towards the colony at a run. "How the hell did Aeryn get arrested?"

"I'm afraid she's been arrested for being, in the local vernacular, "a harlot.""

"Aeryn?" I was so shocked, I almost stumbled. "Look, I know how a lot of people feel about those zany Peacekeepers and their recreating, but Aeryn's my wife, dammit."

De Gautier shrugged just as we reached a concrete sidewalk. "Apparently there was also some sort of fracas with the local police, the Papal Guard. But don't worry. Mr. Vergaah has taken the case straight to Pope Demosthenes. He'll straighten everything out."

Crap! Aeryn could have gotten rousted by some over-zealous cop for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and if he got pushy…Well, Aeryn was very good at pushing back.

We reached the town which appeared to be made out of huge shipping crates, which I found out were pretty common for new human colonies. Then, at one end of the city's main, (And only.), square was what had to be their cathedral. We ran up the steps and were stopped by a human soldier. "On the left, third door. Go right in."

I thanked him and we both headed down the hallway and through the third door. I came to a sudden stop. Christ! It was like something out of an old movie. Seated on a wooden throne was a stern looking old man dressed in white robes carrying a shepherd's crook and wearing a miter hat. Surrounding him were red robed flunkies and surrounding them were clutches black robed priests.

In front of the priests were a group of what I took to be the Papal Guards, looking much the worse for wear. Blue and gold striped pants and shirt, a steel breast and back plate and one of those helmets you associate with the Spanish conquistadors did not go well with the black eyes, fat lips and bloody noses I saw. To the other side were more Guards, armed with halberds and swords surrounding a radiant Sebacean, who did not look the least bit contrite. She saw me, smiled and waved. I waved back but I was too upset to smile.

"Christ! Where is Charlton Heston? He should be hanging from the ceiling." I muttered. De Gautier shot me an odd look, but made no reply.

Apparently, the beat-ees were presenting their case. "Your Holiness, the woman then used language on my men that I hesitate to repeat, but was extremely un-ladylike."

"I called them a bunch of chicken shit pussies." Aeryn said, unhelpfully.

That caused an uproar among all and sundry, who were apparently not used to un-ladylike language. A tall flunky banged a staff on the floor and loudly called for silence. Eventually, everyone settled down.

"What happened next, Captain?" That was the dude in white, who I took to be the local Pope.

"I arrested her for being a harlot, what with her unseemly clothing and…and her language."

"And?"

"She struck Corporal Borelli." He pointed to a rather chubby guard who was nursing a bloody nose. He nodded and pointed to Aeryn. "She hit me, Your Holiness."

"It was barely a tap." Aeryn protested. "Am I at fault if these people can't fight?"

More uproar, more staff banging and more cries for silence. The Pope spoke again. "And you eventually had to use your halberds on her, Captain?"

The captain nodded. "It was the only way to control her. She was a madwoman!"

Aeryn looked like she was about to say something, but wisely desisted.

At that point Rudy wriggled out from a pack of black clad priests and stood in front of the Pope. "Your Holiness, Mrs. Crichton, and I point out that she is a married lady and mother of three fine children, is a former Peacekeeper, admittedly, but one who has given up the ways of the Peacekeepers for married life. I will admit that her mode of dress is not as modest as those of the Sisters in Christ." Rudy motioned to a mass of black clothing in the back that I had initially taken for someone's laundry. Since it was moving, I now decided that these were the local women, dressed from head to toe in shapeless black gowns.

Rudy went on. "Her language is also intemperate, at times. However, we must admit that she violated your wise laws on female attire, female subordination to males, use of ungodly language and she did attack and beat up…"Rudy stopped and did a quick count…"Seven of your Guards." Aeryn smiled and nodded her head vigorously.

Rudy sighed dramatically and spread his hands. "I must admit that the Ultimate Punishment must be enforced on Mrs. Crichton."

For a second I was stunned at what I had heard. "Are you out of your frelling mind, Rudy? Are you trying to get Aeryn executed?" I strode towards Rudy when a Papal Guard stepped in my way. I got ready to pantak jab him, but something hit my leg and it collapsed under me. I rolled over and saw a Guard holding his halberd. Damn! It must be more than just an axe on steroids. It must have a stun function as well. I pushed myself to my feet, wobbled a bit and hobbled towards Rudy. Something tapped me on the back of the head and I saw the floor coming up at me. Then nothing.

I came to face down on the deck of the lander. Someone was putting something foul smelling under my nose and Rudy was sitting at the other end of the lander. I staggered to my feet, pushing one of the gunners out of the way. "Rudy, are you out of your fucking mind? Leaving Aeryn there to be…" I could hardly say the words"… to be killed?" I took a step towards him and fell flat on my face again.

"They hit your leg again with the sonic halberds, I'm afraid, John." Rudy said as if he hadn't a care in the world.

"And I'm just fine, John."

I managed to turn myself around. There sat the love of my life, Aeryn. "What…?" I began.

Rudy smiled. "Suppose you were a religious leader and had taken several tens of thousands of your flock off to another universe to live life as your god intended. What would be the ultimate punishment you could devise?"

I looked at Aeryn. She appeared to be just fine. "Okay, so it isn't being burned at the stake. What is it?"

"Why, being banished from Jerusalem, John. I'm afraid Aeryn has been permanently banned from ever setting foot on that planet again. She'll have to live without Pope Demosthenes' wise rules concerning…Well, this and that." Rudy turned to the pilot. "Ah, I see we're almost back to _Wasp_."

I looked back and forth between Aeryn and Rudy. "I damned well hope you aren't putting your damned base here."

Rudy stared at me for a second. "On Jerusalem? Perish the thought. Aside from their odd beliefs on the place of females, the Papal Guard doesn't have the numbers or the weaponry to fight off any kind of attack and their industrial base isn't sufficient to do more that perhaps repair the torn crew clothing of any damaged ship." Rudy actually winked at me. "I must say, John, that I would have thought that you'd have more trust in my diplomatic abilities. Put Aeryn in danger? Indeed not!"

"Well, I had a wonderful time, Rudy." Aeryn said happily. She reached over and whispered in my ear. "I'll tell you all about it in bed tonight. I hope you're feeling well, John. I'm very much in the mood."

"We won't be getting to the next planet until late tomorrow afternoon ship's time." Rudy said cheerfully. "Feel free to sleep in you two."

The next planet! It couldn't be any worse than the one we were leaving.

I really should know better by now.

The Scarran leaned towards me and I saw the heat rising from his heat glands. I was about to get a blast of heat. The heat washed over me for a good thirty microts. Then, it stopped.

"Sorry, Baron Crichton, but that's all I have. Normally, I can accommodate just about any race's requirements, but it was just a lucky shot that knocked our power out."

I grinned. "Hey, you're doing your best, Medoc. It's not exactly Jamaica, mon, but it'll have to do." I turned to my lovely wife. "Babe, why don't you come and sit by me? Medoc can turn the heat up faster than a hundred dollar pickup in a Florida summer."

Aeryn glared in our general direction. "I've had all the Scarran heat I'll ever want and…"  
Whatever she had been about to say was cut off by bursts of pulse weapon fire slamming into the control station of the spaceport, where we were taking shelter. Aeryn growled at Medoc. "Are those frelling Luxans going to keep firing at us until we're all dead?"

"No, Baroness." Medoc said quietly. He had explained things to Aeryn a half a dozen times by now. "The Luxans outside are fighting over who'll be your ally on this planet. Any fire directed to this building is unintentional, I assure you. They want to be your friends."

"What do they do when they want to be your frelling enemies?" Aeryn yelled. The last part was almost drowned out by more pulse weapon fire. This time it went over the building, missing us.

Medoc just shrugged.

Medoc and his family ran the spaceport and were the only non-Luxans on the planet I liked to call Unpronounceable, or sometimes, just Gibberish. Years before, two Luxan clans, the Quatarsh and the Chappans, had agreed to set up a colony here. As it happened, the initial planetary survey had been somewhat slapdash. Hard to imagine with Luxans, I know. But, a valuable mineral deposit that was supposed to be in Chappan settled territory was actually on Quatarsh land. The Chaps suggested the border be changed. The Quats suggested that it stay the same unless the Chaps made some serious economic concessions. The Quats said a few nasty things about the Chaps and vice versa. Bang! Now they're the Crips and the Bloods.

Medoc who had been just a little heat source when this began had explained to us, in boring detail, how the two clans had eventually split into three Quatarsh sub-clans and two Chappan sub-clans and now all five fought each other merrily, leaving very little time for them to use the facilities of the nice spaceport Medoc's family had built. Hard as it seems to grasp, the Scarrans constituted the responsible adults in these parts.

Word that someone wanted this open air shooting gallery for a military base, was music to the ears of all the local gang bangers. After all, with any luck, they could trade for really nice weapons and destroy all of their neighbors. And to think that I used to think the Arab-Israeli thing was hard to solve.

And so Aeryn and I sat in a powerless spaceport building in mid-winter while battle raged around us.

Aeryn finally came over and sat beside me. "I'm sorry, John. When Rudy announced he was going to handle all of the negotiations by radio, I should have stayed on the ship. I just wanted to see what was happening here."

I hugged her. "No problem, Sweet Thang. According to Medoc, they'll run out of ammo in another six or seven arns and we can take off again."

"Six or seven arns, John?"

"My heat glands are powered up. Anyone want some warmth?"

This time Aeryn nodded.

The next day, Aeryn and I got back aboard the _Wasp_. Rudy was there to greet us.

"Rudy, I don't care what they offer you, I'm telling Spanky on you if you put any kind of base there."

Rudy just smiled. "Not possible I'm afraid. On to the next planet."

When we arrived at the next planet, Aeryn and I stayed aboard _Wasp_. In fact, I wouldn't have gone down to the planet for anything. Well, unless Aeryn said she was going. After a couple of days in orbit, Kathleen O'Donnell came to brief us.

"No comic opera governments? No gun crazy Luxans here?" I asked sarcastically.

Kathleen shook her head. "No, but it is a complex situation planet side. There are four separate groups who colonized this planet."

I shrugged. "It's a big planet. There should be room for everyone." I said that before I remembered our Luxan amigos on the last planet.

"Is there a problem?" Aeryn asked. "This appears to be the last possible base for you until you get much closer to New Gotland."

Kathleen nodded. "If we put our base here, we may be accessories to genocide. On the other hand, even if we don't put a base here, the genocide will continue. And the race in danger of being wiped out is hardly lovable."

Kathleen put her computer down in front of us. "But, I'm supposed to brief you on behalf of Dominar Rygel." She hit a key and a hologram of the planet popped up. "This is the planet we're at, called Adastra by its human colonizers. However, the briefing begins over twelve hundred years ago on a planet some twenty light years from here." A second planet's image popped up. "We sent a destroyer there to have a look at it. So far, it has no name. They sent these holos back via a message torpedo." We got a close up of the planet.

Aeryn leaned forward to get a better look. "The planet was bombarded from space with nuclear weapons." As we got a closer look, it was obvious to me that Aeryn was right.

Kathleen nodded. "Not just nuclear weapons, but biological and chemical weapons as well." We got a close up of lots of blasted rock with a few stunted shrubs. "There are some plants that have survived and the drones the destroyer sent down might have picked up signs of small animals. There also appears to be life in the deepest parts of the oceans. But all intelligent life is gone."

The holo changed to a long abandoned facility on an airless moon. "Some of the inhabitants lived in colonies elsewhere in the solar system and avoided annihilation. They did have some very crude faster than light technology and decided to look elsewhere for a home." The scene changed back to Adastra. "They came here, in two groups. One group calls itself Gods. They called the other group Slaves."

"The Slaves were…They were really slaves?" I asked.

"Yes. There were about a million Gods and they owned over ten million Slaves." The holo changed to a shot of several strange ships. It wasn't until I saw a tiny human ship near them that I realized how huge they were. "The Gods' ships were massive and what's left of them are still in orbit. That's how we figured out the original numbers."

"Wait, Kathleen. I know a little about economics. Why have slaves? If you have the technology to travel between the stars, you can build machines that can do more and better work than any number of slaves. One robotic lawnmower'll do more than twenty sulky teenaged slaves. It doesn't make sense."

Kathleen nodded. "It makes no economic sense, but if you really believe you're a god, it helps to have slaves who worship you and who you can treat as you like. And everything we've seen of the Gods indicates they are an extremely sadistic bunch."

"Any way, they settled here." The holo changed to a map of the planet, part of one continent was outlined in red. "They settled here on the north eastern portion of this continent. The Slaves thrived, the Gods did not. We don't know if they brought some virus with them, or if it's something that was normally benign to them that mutated on this planet, or if they ran into native bacteria. But the Gods developed all sorts of chronic low level medical problems: Analogues to arthritis, migraines, bronchitis, stomach ulcers, all sorts of things. Worse, they had problems reproducing. We think that they began producing far more male children than females."

"Don't say a word, John." Aeryn said with mock severity. I just smiled.

"By the time they'd been on the planet for three hundred years, the Slaves numbered over thirty million, we think, but the Gods were only a bit over their original million. Then the Slaves rebelled. It may have been planned, it may have been spontaneous, but it was massive. The Slaves died by the millions and the Gods died by the tens of thousands, maybe by the hundreds of thousands. The Slaves killed as many as they could and destroyed as much as they could. Finally, the Slaves retreated to the south and away from the Gods." Another part of the continent was outlined, this time in green. "This is where the main Slave settlements are, although there are smaller settlements all over the continent and the one to the west. Between the Slaves and the Gods is a no man's land. Between the two, it's war to the knife and knife to the hilt. No quarter asked for or given."

A holo of three anthropoids appeared. They had a barrel shaped torso, thick, short legs and long flexible arms. More like tentacles, actually. Their heads were round with practically no nose and no external ears. They were armed. "We used an insect sized drone to get this picture of the Gods' soldiers. The one on the left has a directed energy weapon, but look at the power source." The guy had what looked like a truck battery on a strap over his shoulder plugged into his weapon. "He also has ceramic body armor and a helmet. From examples of captured weapons we've examined, the weapon is about as powerful as a similar sized human power gun or a pulse weapon, but that huge power source is only good for about fifty shots." Kathleen tapped the holo of the middle guy. "This one carries a grenade launcher with a bore of about 35 millimeters which uses an explosive chemical for a power source. He has no body armor. The last one has a rifle firing a steel-cored, lead coated projectile using an electromagnetic railgun system. He has body armor made from the silk of some kind of local, gigantic spider."

"What do the Slaves have to match that?" Aeryn asked.

"Not much." Kathleen said. "They still number in the millions, but they have, or I should say, had, iron-age weapons, mostly spears and bows and arrows, which can be effective in rough country in a guerilla war."

Kathleen put up another holo. These were the Slaves and were more or less anthropoid, but covered with dark hair about six inches long. They had no clothing, but wore belts, carrying pouches and pockets. Each held a spear and one a bow and a quiver of arrows.

Aeryn snorted in disbelief. "They can't take on modern weapons."

Kathleen went on. "The Gods still had aircraft, lots of weapons, sea going war craft, and lots and lots of rage. They sent out parties of a hundred soldiers or so to raid Slave villages and kill everyone. The Slaves slipped back north to the God's home turf and ambushed anyone they could. Slowly but surely, the Gods were being ground down and so were the Slaves. The Slaves probably would have won, eventually, although it might have taken thousands of years. Some had moved so far from the Gods that the Gods couldn't reach them. And the original uprising had killed many technically trained Gods whose knowledge wasn't passed along. It also destroyed a lot of equipment. Eventually, we think, the Gods' would have lost the ability to make high tech weapons and would have been swamped by millions of Slaves."

We got a new holo of a cube shaped object. "This is what the Gods leave behind when they raid a village. It records and plays back a record of what the Gods do to the Slaves they capture." The next holo was about half static, but what it showed was clear enough.

"Christ! Those are children that they're…They're just kids."

Kathleen nodded. "Just kids, being tortured to death, along with adult males and females."

"Do the Slaves do the same when they capture any Gods?" Aeryn asked.

"Not usually, Aeryn. Not from any moral feelings, though. When they over run any of the Gods, they have to get away quickly before a well armed force shows up. They kill the Gods they capture quickly. But the Slaves have been known to torture prisoners to death."

"This war has been going on for eight or nine hundred years?" I asked.

Kathleen nodded. "Then the Slaves got an equalizer about three centuries ago." Kathleen tapped her computer and another holo showed up. "Recognize the type, Aeryn?"

Aeryn leaned over me to get a better look, then shook her head. "It's a Peacekeeper ship I'm sure, but I've never seen anything exactly like it. It's three hundred years old, I assume?"

"A transport. It carried less than a thousand Peacekeepers, more likely five or six hundred."

Aeryn nodded. "That many warriors would have made short work of the so-called Gods."

Kathleen shook her head. "There were no warriors on this ship, only techs. But things were different back then. Techs were expected to be able to take care of themselves on the battlefield. And they had a number of these." Another holo popped up. This one was some sort of ship, about twice the size of a Prowler.

"That's a Devastator. It's a two seat attack craft. I've never seen one, just pictures. They're not as good as my Prowler, but with little opposition…"

"The Gods, naturally treated the newcomers as Slaves. That was a bad move. The Peacekeepers shot the dren out of the Gods. First they destroyed most of the Gods' aircraft. Then they went after their industrial base." Kathleen brought up another holo, this one of the planet. "Originally the Gods controlled tens of thousands of square kilometers. We've used our space based reconnaissance to find evidence of man-made, or should I say Gods- made, structures. The greenish areas show their original area, the one that's crosshatched is what they control now."

I whistled slowly. "They lost about ninety percent of their land."

"That's right, John. Most of their industry is concentrated in their one remaining city. But, they still need raw materials from outside the city to keep their economy running. They have two monorails running into their hinterland, to mines, farms, ranches, whatever. That's where the Slaves and their new Sebacean allies hit them." A new holo popped up. "The Peacekeepers Devastators wore out after a couple of years and their pulse weapons ran out of ammo soon after that. The planet has no tannot root, so no chakan oil. But the techs had other weapons they could make. They didn't have the machines they needed for really high tech weapons, but…Take a look at the weapons these Slaves and their Sebacean friends are packing, John."

I took a close look. "Holy Fess Parker, Batman! Those are flintlock rifles!"

Aeryn punched me in the arm. "Translate, please, human."

Kathleen spoke up. "There's only one rifle there, John. The rest are muskets. Easier and cheaper to make and just as good for their purposes, most of the time."

Aeryn glared at all and sundry. That was mostly me. Kathleen went on. "These are simple metal tubes, closed at one end with a very small hole at the closed end, held by a wooden stock. You pour an explosive powder down the tube, followed by a lead slug, and put a bit of the powder in a pan by the tiny hole at the bottom. Then, when you pull the trigger, a piece of flint strikes steel, causing a spark, which explodes the main charge, expelling the lead slug, which, hopefully hits your enemy."

I could see the wheels turning in Aeryn's head. "Then you have to do that all over again to shoot again? And people actually get hit by these things?"

"Give the young lady a teddy bear! Absolutely right, babe." Aeryn glared at me. She didn't mean it, I knew that.

"Check this holo, Aeryn." Kathleen said. "It's an overhead shot of a small mine. Tungsten, I believe. It's about fifty kilometers from the Gods' city and maybe ten from the nearest monorail. The miners live in the mine itself, which can hardly be much fun. Notice they've cut away trees and brush for some two hundred meters around the mine. Of course, when they go out to do that, they're exposed to any Slave snipers. Running from the mine to the nearest monorail is a road. Aeryn, I'm sure you can see several points where a determined group could inflict damage on a more technologically advance enemy."

Aeryn stared at the holo and nodded. "Yes. You're right. Even those crude weapons could be a problem."

"Especially if one side numbers in the millions and the other side doesn't. There's an old human saying, babe: Quantity has a quality all its own."

"So," I went on, "every cycle the Gods lose a few more people and a few more machines they can't afford to lose. And finally sometime in the future, "Boom!", as John Madden says."

"Things changed again three years ago." Another holo popped up. This one showed what I was sure were humans using some sort of machinery. "President Peng of the Szechwan Republic showed up with what's left of his followers. Szechwan was a populous and wealthy planet back in the Old Universe. Peng has about three hundred and fifty thousand people with him and can expect more. We think he'll have well over a half a million people in a year or two, with enough industry to keep their level of technology at their current level. And they're selling weapons to the Slaves and the Sebaceans. Not modern weapons. They don't know the rules of the game around here well enough to sell possible enemies modern weapons. Does anything in this holo look familiar, John?"

I checked the holo. "Camouflage clothing. What looks like body armor on two guys. Wait! The short weapons with the curved clips…Those are assault rifles of some sort. The longer one with the tube on top is a sniper rifle. The big one is a machine gun and the stovepipe thingy is a bazooka."

Both Aeryn and Kathleen looked at me oddly. "Sorry. A bazooka is a rocket launcher. Fires an explosive missile."

"You could have just said that!" Aeryn said coldly, then smiled at me.

"The Szechwanese have provided enough weapons to arm about a thousand or so Sebaceans and Slaves. The rest still use their old weapons. A thousand troops with weapons almost as good as the Gods' weapons and thousands of troops carrying muzzle loaders? We don't think the Gods will last more than another year or so."

We looked at a holo of the Sebacean and Slave troops for a few long microts. Finally Aeryn spoke. "So you're making a deal with this President Peng?"

"I hope this Peng guy isn't one of those president-for-life types." I said under my breath.

Kathleen laughed. "No. Unlike Rygel, or Emperor Staleek, or King Gustav, or even my parents, President Peng has enough electoral legitimacy to satisfy even a twentieth century American."

When she said it that way, I felt very old.

"Rudy is negotiating a treaty of friendship right now. The Szechwanese aren't important enough to be allies. The good news is that they have twenty divisions and a heavy cruiser."

Aeryn caught that one right off. "And the bad news is?"

"A normal human division has between fifteen and twenty thousand troops. Peng's divisions have between a thousand and twelve hundred with no armor, practically no artillery…Well, damned little except infantry weapons. His heavy cruiser, the _Chih Yuen_ , will never make it into null space again and can't do anything now except orbit the planet. But, we can provide enough weaponry to provide the Szechwanese with one good division. That'll give any raiders that make it to the surface a nasty surprise. And we can make enough repairs to the _Chih Yuen_ so that it'll at least be able to maneuver around this solar system plus we can upgrade and repair its weapons, sensors and comms. Add a few system defense boats and we'll have a base for our convoys."

We stayed on _Wasp_ while Rudy finished his dealings with President Peng. I asked him if there was any chance that he could make a deal to save the Gods, despicable as they were, from annihilation. "We tried to talk to them and got shot at for our pains. They insisted that we return the ships we stole from them and return to being their slaves. Apparently they really believe they are gods and that everything, and everybody, in the universe belongs to them. I don't see any way of making any sort of a deal with them."

 _Wasp_ kept an eye on the planet below us. By the time we were ready to leave, the Gods had been driven back to their last remaining city and were under siege. Intellectually, I regretted the loss of an entire sentient species. In my heart, I didn't see any way out for the Gods.

So, we were off to New Gotland.


	5. Chapter 5

Once A Warrior King

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I own neither Farscape or Hammer's Slammers, but you already knew that, didn't you? Rating: Pretty much K, or K+. I'll let you know if it changes. Time: Not too long after A Matter of Intelligence.

 **King Gustav V**

For some reason the alarm bells were still ringing. Certainly everyone in the city had heard it by now. I'd have to bring that to someone's attention later. If there was a later.

I slammed the door to our quarters, just missing Christina as she followed me in. I began to tear off my court dress and get into battle gear. Christina lightly tapped the closer on her long, formal gown and it fell away from her body. She was wearing absolutely nothing under the gown. In spite of the alarms still ringing, I stopped to stare. "By God, Christina! In spite of having born four children, you look exactly as you did at nineteen."

She laughed, and slid into a loose fitting body suit. I stopped staring and pulled on my own body suit.

"Gustav, I weigh two and a half kilos more now than I did then. And my breasts aren't as firm, although they may be a bit larger. They sag a bit, too, in spite of the rehabbing. But thank you for the compliment."

We swung clamshell armored vests over our heads at the same time and helped each other with the fastenings as we'd done before. That was followed by boots, web gear and attachments, and our helmets. I checked the comm system in the helmets. Then I took our weapons from the rack and handed Christina hers, checked mine, holstered my pistol and slung my 2 cm power gun over my shoulder. We were ready.

I smiled at my queen. "And to think I married you for your brain." She laughed again and we walked out the door.

The corridors of the palace were filled with people moving purposely. I was happy to see no panic, no confusion and no loss of discipline. We had done this many times before. It really should be routine by now.

Christina and I strode into the throne room. As usual in these situations, we smiled ever so slightly. We didn't want anyone to realize how worried we really were.

Our palace had once been a warehouse and looked more like a warehouse than a palace even now. That Peacekeeper bastard Cilo had grabbed the former Exarch's palace, the more fool he. I had taken the spaceport and the industrial area around it. He got the scenery, I got the valuable part of the planet. Valuable is a relative term, of course.

As we walked towards the throne, a short soldierly figure stepped up and saluted me.

"Sub-lieutenant Prince Charles Gustav Vasa reporting for orders, sir."

I returned the salute and knelt before my oldest. "You are to proceed with Captain Blomgren and protect your brother and sisters. The bunker outside of town has been prepared."

Charles took a deep breath and looked like he wanted to cry. "I request permission to remain with you and Mama." He stopped for a moment and then added, "Your Highness."

I shook my head. "Our dynasty must survive at all costs, Sub-lieutenant Vasa. As Captain Blomgren and I, and many others, have told you, the difference between a soldier and all others is discipline. Discipline means doing your duty even if it is unpleasant. Especially if it's unpleasant. And remember, a king must set an example for all."

Charles nodded and saluted me. I returned the salute. "Carry on Sub-lieutenant Vasa."

He turned and walked away. Captain Blomgren, a slender blonde who had survived almost twenty years with the Special Operations Groups fell in beside him. "Right, Sub-lieutenant Vasa, I think you should assist Sergeant Kron with the tri-barrel on the scout car." She said. Normally Charles would have been overjoyed at that.

My son just nodded.

I continued on my way to the throne. I dared not look at Christina. If I did, we'd probably both start crying. "Captain Hakon, can the _Manchuria Maru_ tell us anything about our visitors?"

Hakon, who had been an admiral back when we had a whole planet and a real navy, shook his head. He was standing with a group of his officers amid a clutter of comm machines. "Your Highness, the _Manchuria Maru_ never had very good sensors to begin with. After the sabotage, they're damned near worthless. Worse, those fellows have a damned good EW system operating. If we had good naval quality sensors up there, we'd have spotted them as soon as they left null space and we'd have identified them by now. All we can tell is that they're in a globe formation, which means they're military. One big ship, maybe a cruiser, maybe a battleship, plus two possible smaller cruisers, and a half a dozen or so destroyers, maybe frigates. And they're headed right for us."

I cursed under my breath. That was enough firepower to flatten the whole planet. More than enough, really. "Can we tell if they're humans or locals?"

Hakon thought for a moment. "I'd guess humans, Your Highness. They have what looks like drones out in all directions. Locals would use larger, manned ships."

One of Hakon's officers broke in. "There's another group out there, sir. They're a couple of hundred thousand kilometers beyond the first group."

Hakon nodded. "Tag the first group as Alpha Group and the second as Beta Group."

I leaned over to get a look at Beta Group. "Any idea what Beta Group is?"

The officer looked first at Hakon and then at me. "Your Highness, one is really big and it's slow. But they have an escort of smaller ships. Maybe missile frigates. Maybe even corvettes. It could be a troop transport or a supply ship for Alpha Group and its escorts."

"Let's hope it's a supply ship. Nobody's going to take a task force out here to shoot up a planet that's already been fought over for fifty or more years. They'd do nothing but rearrange the rubble." That was Hakon.

Christina stated what none of us wanted to. "And if it's a troop transport, they can kick us out of here. Along with Captain Cilo, and our damned new neighbors. Then they'll have our new home and everything we've tried to build here."

"Not without a fight, they won't." Christina smiled at me when I said that.

"Incoming message from Alpha Group. I'll put it on the view screen."

I steeled myself for what was to come and was shocked to see a familiar and friendly face.

"Your Highness, how's everything?" John Crichton said to me. "You told me you wanted to get together with Marshal O'Donnell. He's sent out one of his people to make you an offer you can't refuse."

The screen changed to show a wolf-like alien. This could only be Mr. Vergaah, Marshal O'Donnell's head of intelligence and chief diplomat. He bowed to me. "Your Highness, please forgive us for not contacting you until now. We wished to make sure there were no surprises in this solar system. We know you have Peacekeepers on your planet and there is an endless supply of other miscreants about." He smiled." But, as Baron Crichton has said, I think we should be able to come to a mutually profitable agreement."

Later that night Christina slipped into our bed. Her long negligee showed she wanted to talk. Oh, well. I had married her for her brains hadn't I?

She slid across the bed until her head rested on my pillow. "You're worried, aren't you? Why?"

Smart and perceptive. And beautiful, too. "We're inviting an entirely unknown group to set up shop in our home. A very well armed group at that. They can scout out our weaknesses, gather some troops and over run the whole planet."

"Dear Gustav, you worry too much. Admiral Darlan is an ally of Marshal O'Donnell, who we wanted to serve before we got hijacked to this planet. They don't need to scout this planet to know our weaknesses. Those are obvious. If O'Donnell had wanted take this planet, he has enough troops and ships of his own to do so."

"They want one of our moons for a base. Once they have it, they'll fortify it."

Christina put her hand on my chest. "Of course they will."

"But it's our damned moon."

"It is?' she said playfully. " _Manchuria Maru's_ remaining boats could reach any of our moons, but we haven't even sent one to look the moons over. The rest of the solar system is overheated planets, frozen planets, gas giants and airless rocks. We have an Earth type planet: A beautiful, rich and potentially wealthy planet. Once word get out to the villains in this part of the galaxy that New Gotland is worth raiding again, they'll come. We need a strong task force like Darlan's to protect us."

I sighed. "I suppose I've just gotten used to doing things my way and not having to make allowances for any allies."

"Dear, the French Empire was our ally back in the Old Universe. And our new allies, well, friends, are providing us with all that we don't have. Not just tanks and artillery, but they've agreed to repair _Manchuria Maru_. Soon she'll have military grade sensors and some weapons."

"But her engines will still be dead." I grumped.

"You've heard what Hakon and his officers have said. The engines were so badly damaged, they can never be repaired. And we have some brand new system defense boats now. Something we never had here. If what the Interion woman says about the value of tingue tea is correct, in a few years we'll be able to buy a destroyer or perhaps some missile frigates."

"I'd feel a lot better if we had those ships now."

"Who wouldn't?" Christina replied. "Don't worry, Gustav. I believe what Mr. Vergaah said about the conditions on our old Gotland. Those damned Danskers aren't making themselves popular, nor is their puppet government. Once people learn you have a whole world here in the New Universe, they'll come by the tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands! By the millions even. And we'll pass on to our children a happy, prosperous world protected by a valiant army and a powerful New Gotland fleet."

"I'll be happy if they'll get rid of our new and unwanted neighbors and…" I began, but Christina was sliding her nightgown off.


	6. Chapter 6

Once A Warrior King

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I own neither Farscape or Hammer's Slammers, but you already knew that, didn't you? Rating: Pretty much K, or K+. I'll let you know if it changes. Time: Not too long after A Matter of Intelligence.

 **Aeryn Sun**

"The usual, Baroness Sun?"

The waitress was one of the locals. The planet had originally been settled by racial cousins of the Sebaceans. The only noticeable difference between her people and mine was their red and cream colored hair and yellow eyes. The owner of the place, although not a Sebacean or a local, had had the good sense to dress the waitresses in what John had called "Hooters light." Once he had explained that to me, I saw it made sense. The place was always packed with humans.

"Yes, a chocolate ice cream sundae, please." The waitress hurried off and I resumed watching the people in the New Market. In microns, a bowl of chocolate ice cream with all the trimmings was on my table.

"I saw you coming and had the dessertier get started on your favorite." The sundae had been delivered by Farro, the owner. He gave me a toothy grin. "Enjoying the view?"

"Yes, in fact. My husband, quoting some sort of human philosopher, says you can observe a lot just by watching."

That had the same effect on Farro as most of John's human saying had on people. After a micron or two he nodded. "Makes sense, I guess. Kind of obvious if you think about it." He mulled over John's words for a few more microns. "So what are you observing?"

I took a bite of my sundae. "The peace enforcers."

Farro shrugged. "So? They walk around the market and keep order."

"But, I haven't seen any of the merchants slip them any money. Nor have I seen them take any food or drinks from them. I don't see any gangs trying to extort money here, and no thieves. The merchants seem glad to see the police, as King Gustav calls them. The shopkeepers smile and talk to the police. And they smile even when the peace enforcers' backs are turned. I'd say the police are honest and enforce fair laws. What do you think, Farro?"

Farro laughed. "I think you're a very smart lady, Baroness Sun."

Our conversation went no further. John's voice came over my comm. "Aeryn? Are you there?"

"Yes. What is it?"

"Can you get back to Old King Cole's real quick?"

"What's the problem?"

"We have a Chiana problem. I'll tell you more when you get here."

For a split microt I thought about finishing my sundae in a leisurely fashion and strolling back to Gustav's palace. Chiana had caused us enough problems in the past through her own greed and stupidity. But I rose, tossed some money on the table and said good-bye to Farro. Chiana had, after all, always tried to help us when we needed it.

"I'll put your sundae in a stasis box and send it to the palace, Baroness." Farro called to me as I left.

When I entered the palace, one of Gustav's guards waved me to the Operations Control Center. That told me this must be serious. When I walked in, Gustav, Christina, John, Rudy and Kathleen were all bent over looking at a computerized map. I edged in. "What happened to Chiana?"

"It's that damned treasure she was talking about." Jool said from behind me. She also edged in. "Everyone's told her that this planet has been so comprehensively looted over the last fifty or so cycles that there couldn't be anything of value left here. But she wouldn't listen."

"Lady Chiana is being held for ransom." That was Gustav. "She left the area of the city under my control." He gestured at the map. "I control everything from the sea up to the river in the north, centered on the old spaceport. Cilo, that Peacekeeper bastard…No offense, Baroness…" He stopped and looked at me.

"None taken. Cilo is a bastard, even for a Peacekeeper."

"Cilo controls the city north of the river, including the old Exarch's palace. What used to be the suburbs, and some industrial areas are under the control of gangs. Some were locals who grabbed what they could when things fell apart here, others are the mercenaries whose lack of payment caused things to fall apart way back when." Gustav stabbed his finger down on an area of the map to the west of us. "Sallack, a Scarran gang leader has Chiana. His ransom demand arrived about a half an arn ago."

"How much money does he want?"

"That's the thing. He doesn't want money. He wants weapons. He wants enough weaponry to make himself a power on this planet. He wants a hell of a lot more weapons than I'm prepared to see him get."

"I'm afraid I have to agree with King Gustav." Rudy said quietly. "Sallack cannot be allowed to become a power on this planet. This planet would become useless to the Marshal until Sallack could be destroyed and in the meantime a lot of people would die."

"So, we have to rescue Chiana. John and I can handle that. We've done it often enough."

Gustav shook his head. "No. It's not enough to get Lady Chiana back, we need to destroy Sallack. He's becoming too powerful as it is. Mr. Vergaah has graciously offered us the use of some of the Marshal's marines from the task force. Colonel O'Donnell has offered to lead them."

"Aeryn and I are going too." John quickly put in.

Kathleen shook her head. "We'll be going in wearing powered armor. It takes a while to learn how to operate it. Just ask Aeryn."

"She's right, John. You'll have to stay behind." I turned to Kathleen. "But I do know how to use power armor." Kathleen started to object, but I kept right on talking. "I know I'm not perfect, but Chiana isn't your typical kidnap victim, sitting there hoping for a rescue. She'll be trying to let us know where she is and as much as she can about her captors. You'll need someone who understands Chiana. That's me."

Kathleen looked at John and then at Rudy, then nodded. "Okay, Aeryn. You're going. I'll arrange to have you get some more suit time if I can."

"And I can help as well." Gustav said. "As you know, when I came here, I not only brought my own followers, but a thousand or so mercenaries and other odds and ends of troops who wanted to join Marshal O'Donnell. Most of them stayed with me. Some did not and went off to set up their own little kingdoms. One of the soldiers who came with me was a Don Elias Castillo y Ulloa. He claims to be a grandee from Nueva Espana, but from his accent he's more likely a peasant who got conscripted and found military life to his liking. I suspect he wanted to leave my service because his ego wouldn't stand for him serving under a mere king. That said, I decide to try to take advantage of his defection. We came to an agreement. I provide him with weapons, ammunition, funds and intelligence. In return I have an asset among the gangs that control the rest of this planet. His area of operations is quite near Sallack's. I do believe he can be of help."

Gustav got together with his intelligence people and I headed off with John and Kathleen to try to get more training on the powered armor I'd be wearing.

"Good afternoon, Baroness Sun."

The voice was familiar, but I couldn't quite place the face. It looked like…"Gunner Ismaili?" I asked, not quite sure.

He nodded and smiled. "Yes indeed, ma'am. Locked and loaded, and ready to go into combat again."

Gunner Ismaili had taught me to use a powered armor suit a few cycles ago. Then he'd been an old man who was no longer physically qualified for combat, but whose vast experience made him valuable. Now, he looked barely middle aged. "What happened to you? You're…"

"Young, ma'am?" He finished for me. "Human anti-aging medications and treatments had done all they could for me. But one of our docs decided to use some Delvian stuff in addition to the human stuff, and this is the result. I'm probably good for another twenty or thirty years."

I looked him over. His face, once creased and wrinkled, was firm and smooth. His grey hair had turned black, his brown eyes were clear and his muscles bulged. I nodded and smiled back. "You look like you could last that long."

"If his wife lets him." Kathleen said slyly.

"You're married?" I had figured Ismaili as definitely not the marrying kind.

Ismaili nodded. "Do you remember Lieutenant Redd?"

I did remember her. She was a retired Peacekeeper pilot who'd been shanghaied, to use John's expression, by a renegade Peacekeeper captain. After the defeat of her captain, Redd had become a prisoner of war. Rudy, always looking for an opportunity to increase his intelligence "assets" had encouraged a relationship between Ismaili and Redd.

"You're married to Lieutenant Redd?" I asked.

"Yes, ma'am. The docs worked on her, too. The Peacekeepers didn't like to waste, those are their words, ma'am, Delvian medicines on their retired personnel. A little Delvian medicine and some human anti-aging technology and now Pussy is the hottest babe in this or any other Universe. Her hair isn't grey anymore, it's red and her boobs are…" Ismaili stopped and grinned. "Well, she's quite a lady, ma'am."

"I don't think I've ever heard of any Sebacean with a given name of Pussy, Gunner." I teased. John had made me well aware of many aspects of human personal nomenclature.

"Her given name's damned hard to wrap my tongue around, ma'am. It's just a nickname." Ismaili blushed slightly.

"I hope to meet…Um…Pussy soon."

"No problem, ma'am. We don't use anything like your Prowlers, so she got herself assigned to aerospace fighters. She's here with the task force."

Kathleen broke in. "I'm sure the Crichtons will be happy to meet her, but we have work to do, Gunner."

Gunner Ismaili walked us into the power armor training station. Human power armor looks a lot like Peacekeeper armor, but it's tougher and it's powered, so you don't have to rely on your own muscle power to move around. You can also carry more powerful weapons and lots more ammunition.

"Remember how to get inside, Baroness?" Ismaili asked.

I slapped the opening lever and the helmet pivoted back at the nape of the neck until it was facing backwards. The chest of the armor split in two. I grabbed a bar over the armor and swung myself up. I lowered my legs into the armor and slid in. A tap by my right thumb caused the suit of armor to close around me. "Good enough?" I asked.

"Yes, ma'am. Now let's try a simple move. Turn to your right and let's try a few simple maneuvers. When were sure you can move and communicate, we'll take you over to the firing range. We have a little surprise for the Scarrans. I think you'll like it."

"A surprise for Scarrans? What is it?"

He laughed. "Since energy weapons don't seem to work so well on them, we're going to try a slug thrower."

I remembered the crude firearms back on John's Earth. "Bullets? I'm not sure…"

"Not exactly bullets, ma'am. We use a depleted uranium penetrator fired at very high velocity from a rifle with an artificial diamond barrel. It should go right through a Scarran."

"I suppose I'll find out." I muttered.

A solar day later we were back in the Operations Control Center. Standing with Gustav and Kathleen was a small dark man in a mismatched uniform with a serious amount of gold braid clashing with his medals. "Baron Crichton, Baroness Sun, may I introduce you to _Capitan_ Don Pedro Sangre, who is here representing _General_ Don Elias Castillo y Ulloa."

Sangre bowed low to me and to John. "At your orders, Don Juan and Dona Aeryn. My _patron_ , Don Elias, is most happy to assist you in this matter. Low born scum such as this Scarran Sallack are an insult to honorable persons such as us. His existence should have been terminated long before this."

I had the feeling that Don Pedro was neither honorable nor a gentleman, but said nothing. I returned his bow with a slight one of my own. "My sentiments exactly, Don Pedro."

"Perhaps you can brief us now, Don Pedro?" That was Rudy who had appeared out of nowhere it seemed.

"If you will permit me?" Don Pedro walked over to the map display in the center of the Operations Control Center. "This is the area controlled by this Scarran. He has roadblocks set up where you see the red marks. All other entrances to his territory have been physically blocked." Sangre grinned at us. "Almost all I should say." He then tapped the map. "Sallack's headquarters, where he certainly has Dona Chiana, is in an underground bunker here." He tapped the map again and a sidebar appeared. "These are the schematics and specifications of the bunker." I checked the sidebar. The bunker was heavily armored and heavily defended. Fighting our way in would be a bitch. I said so.

Sangre smiled widely. "It would be if you fought your way in from the surface, Dona Aeryn. However, there is another way into Sallack's area. There is an old sewer system, long abandoned that runs right past his personal quarters. This is where he is holding Dona Chiana. All of the old records show the wall on the side by the old sewer to be at least ten meters thick; Impenetrable without heavy weapons. In fact, the wall is less than a meter thick and it is very old. I, myself, led a reconnaissance party to the wall only this morning. Using nanobots, I succeeded in taking a picture of the room beyond the wall." He tapped the map display again. There was a blurry but recognizable picture of Chiana, chained to a rough wooden chair. Just visible in the background was a Scarran. Chiana was smiling at him. The little tralk was probably trying to talk Sallack into letting her go.

"When do we go?" I asked.

"Whenever you are ready." was Don Pedro's quick reply. "The most esteemed Don Gustav has provided us with excellent weapons which we will use to create a diversion while your forces attack the Scarran's bunker. Now, if you will permit me, I shall return to my _patron_ to ready our attack." He saluted us and left.

"We get to attack the bunker?" I asked Gustav.

"I do not want to be giving powered armor to Don Elias." Gustav replied. "However, the marines under Gunner Ismaili's command have been briefed and there's a squad of my troops with them. You should have no trouble, Aeryn."

John leaned in to whisper in my ear. "You'd have no trouble if you sat this one out, but since I know that's not your style, I'll just wish you good luck, babe."

I gave John a quick kiss. "Luck has nothing to do with it. It's a matter of skill."

The plan was simple. Gustav's engineers had breached the old sewer system where it ran under his headquarters. All we had to do was go down the main sewer line for a metra or so, turn left, go a half a metra, then go off into a minor tunnel for a hundred motras and we were there. A squad would be left at the two turning points to make sure we'd have a clear run back.

We walked down the stairs under Gustav's headquarters until we got to a recently excavated hole. Ismaili stopped his troops. "Okay, people. Just like a fireman in the old videos, slide down the pole. It's only four meters. Form up below. The big glow in the dark arrow painted on the wall is to show you which way to go. That's for your benefit, O'Flaherty." There was some suppressed laughter at that. "Okay, Baroness Crichton, you stay with me in the command group. Go, people. Are you fucking waiting for an engraved invitation?"

We went.

When I hit the bottom, I inhaled. I wished I hadn't. "Christ! Ten thousand years of shit in here." Someone said over my suit's comm.

"You'll manage." Ismaili growled.

It seemed like it took forever, but we found ourselves standing before an old wall that had been well marked with paint. "This is it." Ismaili growled. "That fucking so called Don did his job at least. Gorcey, you got your recon nanobots ready?"

Another voice replied. "Already at work, Gunner. There a crack in this wall that's big enough for a billion nanobots to go take a look." There was a brief pause, and then…"There we go!"

A picture formed on the right side of my helmet visor. It was Chiana. "That's her." I said. "That's Chiana and she looks to be okay."

"Gorcey, who else is in there?"

Gorcey fiddled with his controls and the picture changed. "Three Scarrans, all on the far side of the room away from Lady Chiana, one Sebacean or maybe human with a power gun, and some sort of giant spider that looks to be feeding Lady Chiana. Stairs to the left, not big enough for more than one person to come down at a time. No other entrances. We look good to go."

"Sappers! Get your charge rigged." Ismaili said. He sounded happy to be back in combat.

"Gunner." I said softly. "If we blow the wall, Chiana could be…"

He cut me off. "No worries, Baroness. We aren't going to blow the wall. The wall is ancient concrete. The charge is going to eliminate the chemical bonds that hold the concrete together. It's just turn the wall into dust. Won't hurt anyone on the other side and it'll give us cover when we go in."

The sappers, a human name for combat engineers, started unrolling their charge. It looked like a giant piece of paper. I hoped it would do the job. They covered the wall and then one gave thumbs up to Ismaili. "Fire in the hole, people. We go in five, four, three, two, one…"

There was a cloud of dust and a rapid burst of gunfire. I headed straight for Chiana to reassure her. I found her clinging to the giant spider screaming at the top of her voice. "Don't shoot! Don't shoot. Kollo's a friend. He's a slave! Don't shoot." The spider, who I assumed was Kollo was hanging onto Chiana and howling at the top of his lungs.

"Chi, it's me, Aeryn!" I screamed. "We're here to rescue you."

She looked up and smiled. "Well of course you are. What took you so long?" She didn't wait for a reply from me, luckily for her, but grabbed her many legged friend and stood up. "Shall we go?"

I turned to Ismaili. "Are we ready to go?"

"You bet. We got DNA samples from the Scarrans. They were too shot up to identify, but if one of them's Sallack, we'll know when we get back."

Chi pointed to the farthest Scarran corpse. "That bastard is Sallack, and you killed him too quickly."

"Yes, that is Sallack." added a soft voice. It took me a micron to figure out it must have been Kollo.

"Okay, back the way we came, people. By the Prophet's balls! Are you planning to have a picnic here, people?"

As soon as the words were out of Ismaili's mouth, Chiana screamed, "No! We aren't going back! We're too near the treasure."

Ismaili loomed over her in his armor. "Lady Chiana, there's a bunch of heavily armed gangsters up there and before long they're going to be coming down here looking for trouble. And when they do, I want to be long gone. So get your eema in gear. We're moving out!"

Chi just smiled. "First, no one's coming down here. And secondly, do you want to do this all over with another gang leader?"

"What in the hell…" Ismaili began, but Chi kept right on talking.

"This isn't a military organization you're fighting, General. It's a gang of criminals. Right now the survivors are grabbing all the loot they can grab and running away as fast as they can. I know, I've been here for a while. The only thing that kept Sallack's people in line is that they were scared drenless of Sallack and his two Scarran goons. Secondly, I'm going to get the treasure I set out for. If you grab me and take me back, I'll just head this way again, get caught by another gang of crooks, and you'll have to rescue me all over again. It could go on for weekens, maybe even monens."

Ismaili didn't say a word for almost a microt. "How far is this alleged treasure, anyway?"

"Less than a hundred motras." Chi said with a smile.

"Gorcey, do you have eyes upstairs?"

"I got nanobots all over the place, Gunner. There's no one in this dump but us. All of the Scarran's troops vamoosed."

It was more like three hundred motras to the treasure and I cursed the day I first met Chiana every dench of the way. But at last we were there.

"This is it, big boy!" Chi said, patting Ismaili's armored arm.

"Cho, does this look like anything?" Ismaili snarled. He really didn't sound happy about Chiana's little detour.

Two of the sappers moved up to the wall and started examining it. Finally, one spoke. "Someone cut into this old concrete and sealed it back up. They went to a lot of trouble make it look just like the old stuff, but it ain't more that a couple of years old. Must be something back there."

"It's my treasure!" Chiana said happily, "Open it up. Open it up." She was pushing one of the sappers into the wall, or trying to. In his armor, he was far too heavy for her to move.

"Gunner Ismaili?" asked the sapper.

"Go ahead and open the fucking thing up so we can get our asses out of this trap."

The sappers spread another sheet of the concrete de-stabilizer, or what ever the frell it was, and the concrete changed to a cloud of dust.

"There it is!" Chiana shouted, and then started coughing from the concrete dust she'd inhaled.

Sure enough, there was a metal box in a small niche in the wall. Was there really treasure in it?

"Open it up! Open it up!" Chi yelled in between coughs.

"Grab the damned thing." said Ismaili." We'll open it back at the base. People who leave treasure around sometimes booby trap the damned things."

"You found a lot of treasure before, Gunner?" someone asked.

"I found everything before, recruit."

We made it back to Gustav's palace. Once there, Chiana was in agony as various technicians looked over the case for any sign of a booby trap. Finally, someone decided it could be opened. Even then, they took it outside and had a robot open it. The robot carefully opened the case and examined the contents. Half the people in the frelling palace gathered around to watch, from Gustav and Christina on down.

"It's okay." Called a tech who had been running the robot. Before anyone could stop her, Chiana raced to the box. "I'm rich! I'm rich! Look! Look everyone! These are Hynerian bonds. That's Rygel's face on the bonds! He's s-o-o-o- handsome, isn't he? Look at all the zeroes on them! I've got millions…No billions…No…What comes after billions? I'm rich! I'm…" Chiana turned and faced us with a huge grin on her face. "No, I'm not rich! We're rich. My friends are rich, too! Jool, I'm going to buy you your own university! Pick one out. Aeryn, I'll buy you your own command carrier. And John, I'll…I'll get you the finest wormhole exploring thingy…whatever! And for myself, I'll start with my own planet! A nice one."

While Chiana was blabbing on, Jool had knelt by the box and was examining the bonds. She did not look happy. She stood. "Chiana? You're not rich."

Chiana stopped in mid-sentence. "Of course I'm rich. These are Hynerian government bonds. Rygel will pay them off. He has to, otherwise no one would ever buy his bonds and…"

Jool was shaking her head sadly. "This isn't Rygel on the bonds. It's the face of Bishan. I know about these bonds. After Rygel escaped and the Peacekeepers were starting to fall apart, Bishan called in all of his supporters. He told them he needed more money to hire mercenaries, to pay his secret police and to bribe the Peacekeepers. The owners of these bonds were Bishan's strongest supporters. They knew if Bishan fell, they'd go with him. Most of them are dead or in exile and Rygel is never going to pay off any of these bonds. He declared them null and void cycles ago."

Chiana looked like she was going to cry. Then she smiled. "Well, easy come, easy go. Isn't that the human expression, old man?"

John put his arm around Chi. "Yeah. Another human expression is, "Money can't buy happiness." But we'll remember how generous you were, Pip. Atta jirl!" Chiana hugged John and then walked away looking, almost, like she hadn't a care in the world.

A uniformed flunky cleared his throat. "Your Majesty? There's an emissary from…" he stopped and looked around "…Um, our other neighbors."

Rudy gave Gustav a smile. It was a smile I had seen before. Rudy used it when he had someone's mivonks in his hand and was squeezing. "I had been wondering, Your Majesty, when you were going to mention your other neighbors."

I shot a glance at John. He shrugged his shoulders. He didn't know.

Gustav smiled back at Rudy. "You know about…them?"

"We do have warships in orbit, Your Majesty. We would be very remiss in our duties if we didn't look down."

Gustav and Rudy headed back to the throne room, deep in muttered conversation. I whispered in John's ear. "Other neighbors? I haven't heard of anyone but the Peacekeepers and ten million different thugs. Who else is there?"

"I guess we won't be the first to know, babe."

Waiting in the throne room was a tall, slim and very handsome young man in a black uniform covered in silver braid. An anachronistic sword hung from his belt, the end actually dragging the ground behind him. He smiled and bowed deeply when Gustav approached and held out a thick document with many seals on it. "Your Majesty! Allow me to present my credentials. I am Captain Baron Hans von Tarlenheim, and I represent Count Rudolph von Brunswick."

I had met Brunswick before as had Chiana and Jool. He was a human mercenary who'd taken over a Sebacean colony world on behalf of the Scarrans with two other mercenaries. One was a man called Sir Robert Knowles, more of a criminal than a soldier. Much more of a criminal. The third was Lord Kurita, a sadist from what Chi and Jool would tell me. I still didn't know all of what had happened to them on Jalo. My eyes slid over to the two women to see their reaction.

Chiana smiled and walked towards von Tarlenheim, her hips swaying as she did. That told me nothing. That's the way Chi always approached any good looking male. She held out her hand. "Please to meet you. I'm Lady Chiana d'Nebari, of the Court of Rygel XVI. Your master was able to do me a favor a while back. I've been wondering if I would be able to return the favor."

Von Tarlenheim surprised Chiana by taking her hand and kissing the tips of her fingers, very lightly. "The pleasure is all mine, My Lady." He murmured.

"Oh, I hope not." Chiana began to rub her body against his.

"And to what do we owe this diplomatic visit?" Rudy interrupted, with a leer.

Von Tarlenheim extracted himself from Chiana's embrace and bowed to Rudy. "Mr. Vergraah." His hand ducked into his uniform jacket and came out with another ornate document. "I'm also accredited to Marshal O'Donnell's representatives, as well."

Rudy took the document and perused it for a micron or two. "Seems in order, Baron. May I ask the purpose of your visit?"

Chiana answered that for him. "Obviously, Rudy, the Count wishes to resume his…friendship with me. Isn't that right, Baron?"

The Baron managed a diplomatic blush and shook his head. "Count von Brunswick was unaware of your presence here, Lady Chiana. Otherwise I'm sure he would have come himself to see you."

Chiana smiled at the diplomatic lie. She knew it was a lie, of course. But as an accomplished liar herself, she enjoyed hearing one that was well told.

"Perhaps you could tell us how you came to be sharing this planet with our ally, King Gustav?" Rudy said.

Baron von Tarlenheim smiled disarmingly. He was a good diplomat. Lying seemed to come as naturally to him as it did to Chiana.

"Mr. Vergraah, Your Highness…Could we go someplace more private?"

Rudy and Gustav gave each other a glance and Gustav led us all off to a small room off the main throne room. He sat and waved the rest of us into chairs around an ornate wooden table. "This room is as spyproof as my intelligence people can make it. Now, how exactly did you end up here?"

"When Count von Brunswick came to this New Universe, he made the mistake of falling in with Knowles and Kurita."

That made Brunswick sound like some peasant from an agricultural world who'd been taken in by…What was John's expression? City thickers? That wasn't at all the case. Brunswick was an experienced mercenary commander who'd run his own planet in his day. He knew well enough what kind of humans he was dealing with, even if he didn't know the Scarrans and Charrids.

Von Tarlenheim went on. "Luckily, we were able to save Lady Chiana and Professor Hovalis from Kurita and Knowles when they landed on Jalo, looking for Baroness Sun."

Almost true. Brunswick was the only one of the three to realize that Chi and Jool could be worth more alive to Rygel and Marshal O'Donnell than as frell toys.

"In addition, we were able to make contact with Marshal O'Donnell's forces to try to rectify the unfortunate situation on Jalo."

Having caused the unfortunate situation, Brunswick had seen that they were just frontmen for the supposedly ex-Imperial Charrid raiders who were doubtlessly working for elements in the Scarran Court that opposed the Idelion Peace Treaty. Sooner or later, the human mercenaries would have outlived their usefulness and become dinner for the Charrids.

"When Marshal O'Donnell's task force showed up, we shut down the spaceport defenses for them, so their troops could land."

Rudy cleared his throat. "I should point out that Admiral Cervera was acting entirely on his own and not as an officer of Human Forces Command. It was only after he took Jalo that he decided to pledge fealty to Marshal O'Donnell."

Nobody believed that, of course. But the Scarrans could hardly complain if one human mercenary had taken a planet away from another human force. After all the Scarrans weren't _officially_ involved on Jalo, were they? And neither, of course, was Human Forces Command. Isn't diplomacy wonderful?

Rudy went on. "And how did you end up here?"

Von Tarlenheim sighed. "We had to leave suddenly, of course. And we had to go far away so our former Charrid employers couldn't punish us for selling them out. The first ship we could find that could carry us was coming here. And here we are."

An HFC officer handed Rudy a message flimsy. "An interesting force, the good Count has, I see."

"We have a full armored brigade, sir." Von Tarlenheim said brightly.

"Umm?" Rudy gave von Tarlenheim his mivonks squeezing grin. "Not exactly a full brigade, I'd say. A battalion each of tanks, armored infantry and artillery. Large battalions, though. Seventy to eighty tanks, closer to seventy, I'd think. A few more infantry fighting vehicles than that, and perhaps two dozen artillery pieces. You would give our ally King Gustav a good fight, I'm sure. If he were by himself, that is."

Von Tarlenheim looked suitable diplomatically shocked. "But, of course, we have no intention of fighting anyone. We want peaceful relations with everyone."

Rudy smiled. "And what do you feel will advance the cause of peace?"


	7. Chapter 7

Once A Warrior King

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I own neither Farscape or Hammer's Slammers, but you already knew that, didn't you? Rating: Pretty much K, or K+. I'll let you know if it changes. Time: Not too long after A Matter of Intelligence.

 **Frederic de Gautier.**

"I should have thought we'd have been invited to the negotiations with Count von Brunswick's representative, sir."

Admiral Darlan shook his head. "No, my boy. It's not really our business. King Gustav is in charge of this planet as an ally of Marshal O'Donnell. And to hell with those Peacekeepers on the other side of town. Now von Brunswick's little domain is officially a client state of King Gustav's. We have nothing to say about affairs on this planet, although Gustav and we are both now allies of the Marshal. We do get the outer moon of New Gotland to set up a naval base and we get to fortify the inner moon as a partner of Gustav's. We get one hundred percent of the big moon and fifty percent of the little one. That's really all we need. We lack the troops and the expertise to try to run anything dirtside."

The outer moon was some four hundred thousand kilometers out and had a circumference of some ten thousand kilometers. It had once had mines, factories, homes and God knew what else, but like everything else in this solar system it had all been shot to bits in the past wars. There was nothing useful there now.

The inner moon orbited about twelve hundred kilometers up and was a couple of hundred kilometers in diameter. It was also so shot up as to be useless.

"As you wish, sir. But I'd feel better knowing more about von Brunswick. His reputation back in the Old Universe was…odd."

Darlan beamed at me. "Ah, but you are going to meet von Brunswick, Frederic. As part of the deal, Mr. Vergaah and King Gustav wish to inspect von Brunswick's forces to make sure they're as advertised. He also says he has a present for the Marshall, Lady Chiana and Professor Hovalis. I have no idea what that might be, but I asked that a representative of mine go along, and you're him. Gustav's sending a dozen or so people top look over the operation. Colonel O'Donnell, Lady Chiana, Professor Hovalis are also going along with Dominar Rygel's representatives, Baron Crichton and Baroness Sun. A lander from HFCS _Wasp_ will drop down and ferry the whole team over. Be ready to go at 0900 local, Frederic."

I wondered briefly what kind of present von Brunswick could give to those three different persons. "Could I take Corporal Zoeller with me, sir?"

Darlan laughed. "Do you plan to scare someone into giving away secrets, Frederic? Oh, by all means take your tame savage with you."

Zoeller was a savage. He had been born on some godforsaken lost colony out beyond the bounds of civilization that had regressed to the Iron Age by the time humans had found the colony again. Zoeller had somehow managed to enlist in the Second Foreign Infantry Regiment in spite of being illiterate and innumerate. I had found him when _l'Insurgente_ joined us and found to my surprise that under that blond Mohawk haircut and tribally scarred face was a very intelligent and subtle mind. He was also useful when I had to play "good intelligence officer, bad intelligence officer" when I was interrogating someone.

I saluted the admiral and walked back to my office.

"Zoeller, what are you doing?" I called as I walked in.

"Reading, sir."

Five years as a _grognard_ had given Zoeller a very basic understanding of letters and numbers, but since he began working for me, he read at every opportunity to improve himself. Alas, if he kept at it, he'd probably end up as my boss.

"Well, we both have some reading to do. We're going off to visit Count von Brunswick, and I want us to know everything about him that's in our intelligence archives. So get to it."

We spent several hours reading the intelligence we had on von Brunswick, which was very little actually. Then I turned in and Zoeller kept reading.

"What are you reading?" I asked.

"The Influence of Space Power on History, sir."

He would end up as my boss.

The next morning we were at the spaceport waiting for the heavily armed lander from _Wasp_ to get ready to fly us to von Brunswick's new home.

"May I ask a question, sir?"

"Of course, Zoeller. You may always ask me a question."

"It's about Baron Crichton and Baroness Sun. I know they're here representing Dominar Rygel, but they don't seem to do anything."

An astute observation. One I had thought about myself. I shrugged. "Difficult to say, Corporal. It may be that they're just aristocratic hangers-on, however, their histories would seem to be against that. My theory is that they're just here to observe and report back to the Dominar. We're a very long way from Rygel's domains, but he'll be interested in what the Viceroy of his Frontier Province is doing in his capacity as Human Forces Commander. As long as Marshal O'Donnell isn't planning a coup against the Dominar or starting a fight against an enemy who might take it out on Hyneria, I doubt they'll do much. Just watch and listen."

One of the _Wasp's_ marines came out and waved us aboard. There was a platoon of marines already on board, in addition to Zoeller and I, von Tarlenheim, the Baron and Baroness, Lady Chiana, Professor Hovalis and Colonel O'Donnell.

Von Brunswick's domain was a string of islands nearly a thousand kilometers south of us. I settled down while Zoeller pulled out a reader.

We were approaching the island of Choofen, where von Brunswick had his headquarters when Baron Crichton suddenly called out, "Hey, wait a sec. Can we go down? I think we should look at that."

Von Tarlenheim looked nervous, but agreed that we could land. "The Count has nothing to hide, Baron Crichton."

Everyone has something to hide, but I saw no need to contradict him.

We landed on a small island covered in vegetation. A quick look when I walked out of the lander indicated the vegetation wasn't natural, but had been planted. That the Count did indeed have something to hide was confirmed for me when a half a dozen armed guards approached our lander. Von Tarlenheim quickly shooed them away, but they maintained a close watch on us.

"What is it, John?"

Crichton pulled a bulbous pod from the top of one of the plants. "I know this plant. It's from Earth."

I leaned over for a closer look. I didn't recognize the plant. I shrugged. "Is there some reason Count von Brunswick shouldn't grow Earth plants here?"

Crichton gave me an odd look. "You've lived a sheltered life, grasshopper. This is an opium poppy."

Baroness Sun sighed. "And an ooh-pee-um poo-py is?"

"A powerful narcotic for humans." Zoeller replied.

"Yeah, and now we're dealing with Tony Montana and his little friend." Crichton adopted an odd accent for the last part of that sentence. I was about to ask who this Montana was when von Tarlenheim started explaining that the opium was a medicine and had been for millennia.

Zoeller cut him off. "Historically, opium and its derivatives have been used as pain killers. However, it's been centuries since that was the case. It's been replaced by medicines that are non-addictive and far more effective."

Von Tarlenheim interrupted. "For humans. Yes, for humans. But we sell the…product to Delvians. It's purely medicinal, I assure you."

We allowed ourselves to be herded back into the lander by von Tarlenheim and went on our merry way.

We landed at the small spaceport at Choofen City where Count von Brunswick met us and took us immediately to a parade of his forces.

Von Brunswick's tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, artillery and other vehicles rumbled past us for better than an arn while a military band played. During a period of relative quiet while locally recruited light infantry were marching by the reviewing stand, von Brunswick told us that his dealings in opium were quite legitimate and promised to have a Delvian scientist explain everything to us. Of course, having no specialists in medicine or biology with us, it would be easy for a Delvian to pull the wool over our eyes.

After the parade, von Brunswick took us back to his palace, which really was much nicer than King Gustav's for drinks, dinner and lovely young women, whom I was positive could be very accommodating. I nudged Zoeller. "You can look at them, but no more. I assume that all of them work for von Brunswick's intelligence or secret police. They're all walking honey traps, Zoeller."

He nodded. "I had assumed so, sir."

The Count hauled out his pet Delvian who was immediately set upon by Professor Hovalis. I understood about the first three words of her first sentence and then she and the Delvian went over to a corner of the room. Apparently we did have a biologist in our little group. I'd have to pay closer attention to the beautiful red head. She was quite an expert on many things, it seemed.

In half an hour she rejoined our little group. "I've talked to Tollis, he's Brunswick's pharmacology expert. From the sound of it, his claim that the human plants are for medicinal use is true. They're bought by a race about twenty light cycles from here. They have three sexes and this opium is apparently a cure for some sort of barrenness in one of the sexes. But, we should check this out further."

"Yeah," Crichton concurred. "We don't want people thinking we're the Cali cartel or something."

I was learning about Baron Crichton's use of outdated Earth terms. I'd have to try to find out what some of them meant, if I had the time.

Von Brunswick rung a little bell and smiled at us. "My friends, it is time now for me to give you the present that I promised the lovely Colonel O'Donnell, Lady Chiana d'Nebari and Professor Hovalis." He gestured to his right and, on cue an armed guard came out leading some poor wretch by a control collar.

Even at thirty feet, it was obvious he hadn't bathed for a very long while. His only garment, a bit of cloth wrapped around his waist was stained with excretions. His hair and beard were untrimmed and matted with filth. His skinny frame showed no signs of beatings, but he hadn't been eating well.

Von Brunswick stood there with a smile on his face while the three ladies looked on with a mixture of revulsion and curiosity. Why would this man be of any interest to them?

Suddenly Lady Chiana screamed and lunged at the prisoner. "You bastard!" She yelled and kicked the man in his crotch. He fell to the floor in agony while Chiana kept kicking him.

Finally, Baroness Sun pulled the slight Nebari of the prisoner. "Chiana! What the frell are you doing?"

Chiana turned around in Sun's grip. "I'm paying him back for what he did to Jool and me, that's what I'm doing. He raped us and I'm going to do everything back to him that he did to us."

I glanced over at the Interion. Her hair had turned flame red. She took a step towards the man and then stopped.

"Go ahead, Princess." Chiana yelled. "Go ahead. Kick him."

Slowly she shook her head. "No. I won't lower myself to his level."

"I frelling well will." Chiana screamed while twisting unsuccessfully in the baroness' grip.

"That's Knowles." Jool said quietly.

"Sir Robert Knowles?" I asked. "The mercenary commander from the planet Jalo? But he's dead."

Von Brunswick beamed. "Not at all, Lieutenant de Gautier. When Admiral Cervera's forces over ran Jalo, Knowles came to me for help. He was willing to pay a great deal of money for safe passage off the planet. He has many enemies in both Universes. He did not know then that I am one of them."

Colonel O'Donnell stepped forward. "Thank you, Count. Marshal O'Donnell has had a score to settle with Knowles for many years. Back when my father led only an over-sized battalion, Knowles captured some of our wounded we'd left behind on a neutral planet to recover. Knowles wanted to sell the medicines we'd left for them. He took them and many of our wounded died. He'll be court-martialed under the Rules of War."

"You have no jurisdiction over me." Knowles cried from the floor. "You can't touch me."

The Colonel smiled, a not particularly encouraging smile. "I doubt if our courts will agree with you, but if they do, I can always turn you over to Lady Chiana, or to the civilians on Jalo."

Baroness Sun released her hold on Chiana and let the Nebari kick the prone prisoner in the ribs. I definitely heard a rib crack before Sun pulled her off.

Corporal Zoeller whispered in my ear. "Isn't the treatment of this prisoner quite a violation of the Rules of War, sir?"

I shrugged. "Knowles is more of a criminal than a soldier. He spent his career descending on helpless planets, robbing them blind and then massacring the populations out of spite when they ran out of valuables and money. If you should care to be his defense counsel, of course, I could talk to Colonel O'Donnell."

Zoeller laughed quietly. "I think not, sir. I was just curious."

Once we were back aboard the lander, I called Zoeller over to a quiet corner. "As ground pounder, what did you think of the good Count's little army? They looked quite impressive on parade, at least."

Zoeller pulled a face. "I tried to get away to take a close look at their vehicles, maybe talk to some of the troops, but every time I did, some flunky or another would shoo me back. All I can tell you is that his weaponry is modern and well maintained, and the troops seem to be well trained and disciplined. How they'd perform for real, I can't tell you."

He paused for a second and went on. "One thing about his locally recruited light infantry, though. A lot of people, in both universes, don't entirely trust their local auxiliaries. The Count's locals have weapons as good as his human troops and they appear to be familiar with them. I'd guess they're pretty good troops."

I worked on preparing my report to the admiral for the rest of the ride back.

I had finished the rough draft of my report by the time we got back. To my surprise, Ensign Coucy was waiting at the spaceport with an air cushion jeep. He saluted me formally. "The Admiral wants to see you at once, sir." He motioned for me to get in the jeep.

"What is it, Giles?" I was a little mystified.

"I don't know, sir. Please, just get in. The Admiral is waiting with both King Gustav and Mr. Vergaah."

I got in the jeep and on the ride back to the palace I went through the list of my possible transgressions. An intelligence office is always doing something that someone won't like. If he's doing his job properly, that is.

Coucy led me into the throne room and then into the operations center. There I found King Gustav, Queen Christina, Mr. Vergaah and Admiral Darlan.

"There you are, my boy." Darlan said with just a bit too much jollity in his voice. I guessed I wasn't in trouble with him. Yet.

"Please sit down, Lieutenant." That was King Gustav, very businesslike and gruff. I sat.

Gustav went on. "We have been contacted by a ship that has entered our system and is presently sitting at the edge of our system. Just outside of the range of our sensors so we are unable to determine exactly what kind of ship were dealing with." He stopped, as if expecting a reply from me.

"Surely ships come here, Your Majesty." I had absolutely no idea what this was about.

"It's a Peacekeeper ship." Mr. Vergaah added, unhelpfully.

"Perhaps they wish to visit Captain Cilo?" I ventured. What the devil was this?

"The Peacekeeper captain asked specifically to talk to Captain de Gautier, the Commander of HFCS _Bethesda_."

"Ah." I thought I knew what this was about. "In my report, Admiral, I mentioned that I ran into a Senior Lieutenant Lyssa Tarpa at Karraid." I explained my mission to Karraid and how I had run into the Lieutenant.

Queen Christina grinned. "We have received no visuals, but from her voice I suspect that the officer is an attractive young lady. Did you perhaps exaggerate your rank to impress her, Lieutenant?"

I grinned back at her. "I am not above lying to an attractive woman, but in this case I did not. She simply made a wrong assumption."

Gustav growled at me. "Then this Peacekeeper officer should only command a scout? Hardly a threat to the warships here, unless she's here to do a reconnaissance of this system and its defenses."

"I believe that it would be a good thing to let everyone in the area know that there is a powerful human task force based here, Your Highness." Mr. Vergaah said lightly. "I think we should invite her to come and meet with…Captain de Gautier here."

Gustav glared at one and all, then the Queen spoke. "I agree. Don't you my dear?"

Gustav began to glare at her, then nodded sheepishly. "Yes."

When our little meeting was over, Darlan took me aside in an alcove in the palace. "I'm sorry, Frederic. I hadn't carefully read all of your report. The part about the Peacekeeper officer you met slipped my mind."

One does hope ones words are read with great interest by ones commanders. One is often disappointed. "Why were King Gustav and Mr. Vergaah so upset, sir?"

"Gustav mostly was upset. Having lost a complete planet before, he's a bit paranoid about losing this one. He was afraid we were having dealings with the Peacekeepers behind his back. You weren't, were you?"

"Of course not, sir."

Next morning I sat with our staff officers, Gustav's officers and the Human Forces Command staff, watching Lieutenant Tarpa be interrogated, oh so politely, by Mr. Vergaah. "You wish to defect from the Peacekeepers to Human Forces Command, Lieutenant?"

"I have little choice in the matter, sir." She replied tartly.

"Um." Vergaah said softly. "Little choice in the matter? That's perhaps not the best reason for joining us, is it?"

Lyssa colored slightly. "Allow me to explain. My Sector Commander, based in the Keilan-Borta system, Admiral Olan, has tried to avoid the factionalism that has overtaken the Peacekeepers in the past twenty five cycles or so. The loss of the resources of the Hynerian Empire when Bishan was overthrown, the loss of the major Delvian worlds, the collapse of our alliance with the Luxans, and the arrival of humans in this New Universe, as you call it, has led to extreme strains on the Peacekeepers. The major factions, the Scorpius faction, Grayza's faction, the Loyal Fleet Association, the Control Group, not to mention officers who have gone rogue…" Lyssa stopped for a moment. "Well, the Peacekeepers are hardly a unified group as we once were."

Baroness Sun snorted. "This is hardly a new phenomenon, Lieutenant. When my husband first arrived in this end of the Galaxy, Captain Crais was perfectly willing to ignore Command's orders so he could pursue a personnel vendetta. Scorpius and Grayza are also known to me, and believe me…"

"Yes, yes, Baroness." Lyssa said shortly. "But things were never as bad as they are now."

She stopped and stared at the assembled officers. Hmm! Did her eyes linger for just a second on me? She had been told that I was the task force's intelligence officer and not a ship's captain, of course.

She went on. "Admiral Olan avoided commitment to any of the factions. Of course, he got no support from any of them. Our ships never got needed spare parts, we never got replacement personnel, no new ships were assigned to us. We got nothing."

"Then five solar days ago, a command carrier, loyal to Vice-Chancellor Grayza, arrived in our solar system. Our most powerful ship was a patrol cruiser, no match for the _Cielindo_ which is commanded by an Admiral Bastains. Bastains used to be a junior captain, but apparently Grayza promoted him to his present rank on her own authority.

"The _Cielindo_ came to your system?" That was Baroness Sun. "I took my flight training in Prowlers on the _Cielindo_. She was obsolete then and was little better than a hulk the last I heard of her. Grayza must be scraping the bottom of the barrel if she's reduced to putting that old wreck back in service."

Lyssa nodded. "She has benefitted from the spare parts and replacements that should have gone to us. She's only two thirds the size of a modern command carrier, but she could easily destroy our ships. Admiral Olan was ordered aboard _Cielindo_ with his senior officers. They were all executed. The officers of all our other ships were ordered to come aboard _Cielindo_ or their ships would be destroyed. Two monitors tried to escape and they were destroyed."

"Monitors?" asked Gustav.

Admiral Darlan answered. "Our term for a common type of Peacekeeper escort ship, similar in function to our destroyers. But destroyers are fast, well armed and lightly armored. Monitors are slow, well armed and heavily armored."

"And you escaped to come here because…?" Mr. Vergaah interjected smoothly.

"Admiral Olan had ordered my ship to the very edge of the solar system, with her engines powered down and not using any kind of active sensors. My orders were to observe. After what I observed, I had no desire to be executed or to serve that tralk Grayza, I came here."

"Does anyone know that you were at the edge of your solar system and what you observed? Or that you came to us?" Mr. Vergaah asked.

Lyssa shook her head. "I believe that the staff officers that knew of my assignment were among those executed. I don't know if they advised anyone else. Since I had no idea I would end up here, no one back in the Keilan-Borta system could possibly know I'm here."

"Hmm." Mr. Vergaah smiled ever so slightly. "Do you think that Vice-Chancellor Grayza will be content with her new conquest, or will she have ordered this Bastains and the _Cielindo_ to try to add more, particularly Captain Cilo's little group, to her domains?"

Lyssa didn't need any time at all to think that one over. "She'll want to add this planet to her domains. It's common knowledge among the Peacekeepers that King Gustav is here, but I'm quite sure that Grayza has no idea that a human task force is based here. I'm sure Bastains will come here expecting to find only the limited planet based defenses that King Gustav has."

"Dear me." Mr. Vergaah said with a smile. "I think we should prepare for a visit. And a surprise." He turned back to Lyssa. "Lieutenant, I believe that a place can easily be found for you and your crew with Admiral Darlan's task force. In the meantime, if you will excuse us, we do need to prepare for our visitors."

One of Gustav's soldiers led Lyssa out. As she left, she ran her eyes across the assembled officers. Did she look at me for just a brief second?

Many hours later I left the meeting. We had gone over every scrap of information available about the force that Grayza was about to send against us. Baroness Sun had been particularly useful in describing the strengths and weaknesses of the _Cielindo_. I wondered if perhaps she and Grayza had butted heads in the past as she seemed to have a pronounced dislike of the woman.

I trudged through Gustav's palace until at last I found myself at the doorway to humble quarters. Someone else was there.

"We need to talk. Inside." Lyssa gestured to my door. I happily let her in.

She stopped, turned and looked at me. Without warning she threw a punch at my head. Damn! Too much time spent behind a desk and not enough in the field. I moved too slowly and got a tremendous clout on my ear. I staggered backwards and did my best to drop into a fighting crouch. To my surprise, Lyssa just stood there with her hands on her hips.

"You lied to me."

"I did not."

"Yes you did. You told me you were a ship's captain. You're not."

I relaxed, but still kept a good distance between us. "I told you that my ship was the _Bethesda_ _._ To a human, that would have implied only that I was from that ship. I did not say that I commanded her and I did not lie to you."

She glared at me. "You told the Luxan you were the captain. "

I nodded. "I freely admit to lying to the Luxan. I'm an intelligence officer. We do lie. Don't Peacekeepers lie on occasion? And if you choose to eavesdrop on another's conversations, I can't be held responsible for what you hear or how you interpret it."

"So you're saying this is my fault?"

"Exactly."

Lyssa's face was starting to redden. I prepared for another punch. To my surprise, she pulled her shirt over her head and pushed her bra along with it. As I had suspected, her breasts were small, but very firm. Her stiff pink nipples were poking up nicely. She walked over to my bed, sat and began to take off her boots. She glared at me again. "Do you expect me to take off your clothes, too?"

How could one resist such a romantic invitation?

An hour later we were cuddling among the tangled covers of my bed. Her hair had come undone from the braid she wore it in. It was long, blonde and very fine. I was enjoying playing with it.

"What will become of me?" she asked suddenly.

"You'll end up working for me, I'm sure."

"As your tralk?" she said disdainfully.

"Not at all. I'm the chief intelligence officer for the task force. A genuine Peacekeeper scout, crewed by genuine Peacekeepers will be very useful for keeping an eye on areas that we don't want people to know we are interested in. Eventually, of course, word will get out that there's a Peacekeeper scout serving with us, but even then, no one will know if you're commanding that Peacekeepers' scout for us, or if your ship is really from one of the Peacekeeper factions."

I stroked her hair a bit more. She still seemed tense. "We're somewhat familiar with local technology. We can tweak your ship's engines and sensors and increase your stealthyness considerably."

"Steel- thinness?" She said uncertainly.

"We'll make you harder to detect."

"Peacekeepers aren't afraid of being detected by their enemies."

"Considering your ship's weaponry, you should."

She snorted.

I went on. "Admiral Darlan will confirm your rank. We don't have a rank of Senior Lieutenant, so you'll end up a lieutenant like me. Your crew will also be given whatever ranks are similar to ours. We will need your input in that, Lyssa. As members of the Imperial French Navy, and an ally of Human Forces Command, you'll be paid as we are, promoted as we are, in short treated just like the rest of us."

She turned and looked up at me. She stared for a long time. Finally, she spoke. "I don't know how to say this."

All sorts of horrible thoughts raced through my mind. However, I smiled at her. "Just begin talking. That would be best, I think."

"I was raised as a Peacekeeper. I was born on a command carrier. I never thought of being anything else but a Peacekeeper. Nothing else seemed possible for me. Eventually, I realized that the things had changed. The idealized view of the Peacekeepers I had grown up with was no longer there. People like Grayza and Scorpius and others had changed what we were. All that mattered to them was power."

"There are also humans like that, Lyssa. "I said. No sense in giving her the wrong impression of humanity.

"I now find myself no longer a Peacekeeper and in a situation I never imagined myself in. Nothing in my training prepared me for this." She stopped and shook her head briefly. "Oh, I know. Baroness Sun managed the same thing a generation ago. As did Aida Borzon, who is now the Vice-Marshal of Human Forces Command, and her adopted daughter. And other Peacekeepers, I know. But this is me. Just me."

She stopped and looked up at me very seriously. Finally, "I need a friend. Not just someone to recreate with, or an acquaintance. I need a friend. Someone to help me. To explain things to me. To…to…to… to do I don't know what. I've never had that kind of friend. Peacekeepers just don't have that kind of a relationship."

A human woman in this situation would have been crying by now. Lyssa looked more like she'd like to take another punch at me. I stroked her hair some more. "You know, I met a woman once who thought I might be interesting. I think she may have been right. I think that you are interesting as well."

I put my most serious look on my face. "Mind you, I'm still your immediate superior. Friendship in those circumstances can only go so far. Do you understand that?"

"Yes sir." She smiled and saluted me. "But I wouldn't want my friend to think that I have no interest in having someone to recreate with, too." Her hand was sliding down my chest.


	8. Chapter 8

Once A Warrior King

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I own neither Farscape nor Hammer's Slammers, but you already knew that, didn't you? Rating: Pretty much K, or K+. I'll let you know if it changes. Time: Not too long after A Matter of Intelligence.

 **Lyssa Tarpa, Lieutenant, Imperial French Navy**

Humans liked surprises, so Frederic had said. Well, this should surprise the Peacekeeper task force entering the system.

I was aboard a human ship called _Wasp_. According to Frederic a wasp was a small, irritating but not very dangerous Earth insect. I had asked Baroness Sun about the name and she told me that I'd spend the rest of my life trying to figure out the odd way humans did things.

The _Wasp_ was the most powerful ship in our task force, being less than half the displacement of a command carrier. However, unlike a command carrier, the _Wasp_ had no function but combat. She had 56 missile tubes with numerous reloads, and large numbers of secondary weapons. She was faster than almost any Peacekeeper warship and her missiles were longer ranged than frag cannons.

 _Wasp_ had four destroyers, ships much like a Luxan assault piercer, as her own escort. Admiral Darlan had two cruisers, two destroyers and four missile frigates. They were deployed in what was called a globe formation. _Wasp_ was in the center of the globe, flanked by the two cruisers with the destroyers and frigates surrounding them.

Frederic, Baroness Sun and I were at the back of the ship's bridge, huddled around the _Wasp's_ own intelligence officer's workstation. As Aeryn and I knew more about the Peacekeepers than anyone else, Darlan had wanted us available in case our surprise went, what was the human phrase…pear shaped?

Ahead of us on the main viewscreen was the outer moon of New Gotland which the humans had renamed Kalmar. The moon was between the task force and the planet of New Gotland. It was also between us and the approaching Peacekeeper task force. Below us on Kalmar was a newly installed sensor station on the far side of that moon from us. Their sensors could see the Peacekeepers and would then broadcast their position to us via a tight beam transmission. We hoped that if the Peacekeepers noticed the station they would think it was a mining colony or something.

"We're getting feed from Kalmar, sir." That was one of the humans. "As we expected, it's the command carrier _Cielindo_ , a patrol cruiser, four monitors and four fast escorts."

Frederic, Baroness Sun and I all edged forward to get a look at the viewscreen. No doubt about it. That was the _Cielindo_ and its task force.

"Transmission from the enemy flagship, sir. I'm putting it on the viewscreen.

The screen showed the face of a Sector Admiral. He looked young and newly promoted. He glared at the screen and spoke. "I address myself to the pirate who calls himself King Gustav. I demand that you surrender immediately to Admiral Cilo, who is already on the planet. Any attempt to fight us will be met with your complete and utter destruction."

"Hmm." Frederic muttered. "Cilo has been in contact with Grayza's forces. I imagine that Captain Snuzzex and his tramp freighter will no longer be welcome here, assuming he lives long enough."

King Gustav made no reply, but our communications officer advised us that there was fighting on the planet.

We sat and watched for nearly two arns until the Peacekeeper task force had passed within the orbit of Kalmar.

"Well, my friends, now is the time for us to move out from behind Kalmar and show those Peacekeepers what complete and utter destruction looks like." Admiral Darlan nodded to his communications officer who nodded back. "Task force! Engage the enemy. Maintain formation and mind our battle plan. _Vive l'Empereur_!"

Even with the acceleration compensators, I could feel the ship shooting out from behind Kalmar and heading for the Peacekeepers. It took longer than I would have thought for them to notice us. We were about halfway to firing range when they started to clumsily turn to face us.

"Comm from the enemy flagship, sir. They demand to know our intentions."

Darlan chuckled. "Put me on." There was a brief pause, then: "This is Admiral Francois Darlan of Human Forces Command. I intend to destroy you. I will, however, accept your surrender. Do you wish to surrender?"

There was no reply and the two task forces continued to close on each other.

"We'll be in range in another two minutes, sir." called an officer.

Darlan nodded. "Very good. Advise all units they may engage as soon as we're in range.

The two human minutes crawled by slowly until…

"Missiles away, sir. All missiles have fired. Feed from the other ships indicate all missiles away in one volley. The task force is turning to 170 mark 20 to maintain distance from the enemy, sir."

One hundred and eighty-six human missiles were now hurtling towards my former comrades. I wished that I could stop them, but knew I couldn't. I had made my decision and now I would live with it. Or die with it.

Approximately one quarter of the human missiles had no warheads. They were what were called penetration aids, or "pen aids." Half of those were what were called spoofers. They broadcast spurious missile signatures so that the enemy saw many more missiles than were actually headed for them. The rest were jammers. They jammed enemy sensors so they couldn't detect anything.

"Enemy flagship is launching…missiles, I think, sir."

We crowded around the console. "They look like Prowlers, but the signatures are just wrong somehow." Aeryn said.

"I think she's right, sir." Frederic said. "I think those are the missiles the Peacekeepers have been working on."

"Enemy's opening fire on our missiles, sir."

"They're a good twenty thousand kilometers out of their range according to our intel." Someone muttered as he glared at us.

"They don't have to hit very hard to knock out a missile with a directed energy weapon, Commander Carillo." Frederic said softly. "It makes sense for them to open fire as soon as they can."

"Weapons reporting, sir. _Wasp_ 's missiles are reloaded."

" _Austerlitz_ reports reloaded, sir."

" _Bethesda_ reports reloaded, sir."

Within microns the task force reported they were ready for another volley. There were no further orders. The ships fired another volley of missiles.

"Screen is engaging incoming missiles, sir. Sensors show two hundred and eighty-eight missiles incoming. Repeat, two eight eight missiles incoming."

Human energy weapons and anti-missile missiles shot out towards the Peacekeeper missiles. Bright points of light told of destroyed missiles. Missiles were being destroyed so fast I lost count. There were a lot of missiles coming towards me. Could they all be stopped?

"Alpha volley is detonating, sir." There was a brief pause. "Sensors show sixty one detonations, sir. Five detonated but missed the target, the rest hit _Cielindo_."

Humans used something called detonation lasers. Milli-microns before the thermo-nuclear missile warheads detonated, a gravitic lens was formed that focused a tiny amount of the nuclear energy as a laser. Of course a tiny amount of the energy of a fifty megaton warhead was enough to tear through any warship. All of the initial volleys of missiles were aimed at _Cielindo_. We had hoped that if Grayza's task force's flagship was knocked out, the remainder might surrender or flee. That was looking unlikely.

There was a very bright flash of light near us. "Damn! That was close!"

"What was it? Report!" Darlan barked.

" _Saint Brannoc_ reports a near miss, sir. She reports minimal damage, but they've taken a lot of radiation. Too damned much, sir. They're requesting we release them to the _Lady_ for anti-radiation treatment for the crew."

"Granted. Tell them to move out."

I watched as one of the dots on our sensor screen headed out system. The _Lady_ was parked in interstellar space, far away from any enemy.

"Bravo volley is about to detonate. We lost only twelve detonators to enemy fire, sir. This should be…"

The human never completed the sentence. As the missiles detonated, _Cielindo_ blew up.

"Enemy flagship destroyed, sir." The sensor officer said unnecessarily.

Darlan nodded. "We'll give them another chance. Broadcast me on their tactical channel."

After a few microns, the comm. Officer nodded to Darlan. "Peacekeeper task force. This is Admiral Darlan. I again offer you a chance for an honorable surrender. You've seen what our weapons can do. Surrender or die."

Surprisingly, we got a reply. A Peacekeeper I didn't recognize responded. He was probably one of Grayza's officers, sent to take over Admiral Olan's command. "I'm Fleet Captain Alonthe. You'll have to learn that we Peacekeepers don't surrender, human. Oh, yes. You can probably destroy our force, but we have a good chance of getting at least one of our ships close enough to your planet to destroy your base. And then you can wait for the next Peacekeeper force to arrive. You will learn much about Peacekeepers then, human."

Darlan laughed. That seemed to upset the Peacekeeper captain. "You find this amusing?"

Darlan nodded and gestured to me. "I know a good deal about Peacekeepers, captain. Allow me to introduce one to you."

I stood in front of the comm pickup and tried to look much more confident than I felt. "I am former Peacekeeper Senior Lieutenant Lyssa Tarpa, now an officer in Human Forces Command, serving Admiral Darlan."

"You are a filthy traitor! A traitor to the Peacekeepers!" Screamed Captain Alonthe.

I felt like vomiting, but I smiled. "A traitor to the Peacekeepers? The same Peacekeepers that haven't been able to appoint a Chancellor in over three cycles, since the four major Council factions can't agree on anything? Do you consider the Grayza faction to be the Peacekeepers, Captain Alonthe? That leaves out the Scorpius faction, the Fleet faction and the Control Faction. Oh, and what about Sector Admiral Pallan? Oh, he's certainly a Peacekeeper in good standing, even though everyone knows he really is a mercenary for a gaggle of Luxan warlords. And what about the commander of our Strategic Reserve? Admiral Braca seems to have developed a mind of his own these days, hasn't he?"

With Frederic's help I had practiced my little speech to the Peacekeepers, but now I felt it flow naturally. "There are no more Peacekeepers, Alonthe. They're all gone. And the race from which we originally sprang has now come back and they are the keepers of the peace these days. Not you."

Alonthe's face disappeared from the viewscreen in front of me. "I'm sorry, Admiral Darlan. I failed."

"You did your best, Lieutenant. But, now we have to try to stop those bastards from destroying New Gotland."

We changed course and headed for the enemy task force. Only a few minutes had passed when we got another surprise. "Something's coming out of null space, sir, just this side of Pinkie."

Pinkie was the human's name for the smallest gas planet in the system. I watched as eight dots formed on she sensor screens.

"Sir! They're squawking Imperial IFFs. One of them's _l'Insurgente_."

In less than a minute, a human face appeared in our viewscreeen.

"Commander Pegot, reporting, sir. I've moved my command to our new heavy destroyer, _Suffren_ , 16. I have a newly repaired _l'Insurgente_ with me as well as six more N-14 missile frigates. It looks like you might be having a problem, sir. What can I do?"

"Get to New Gotland before those Peacekeepers do, Paul. They're threatening to knock out King Gustav even if we do destroy all of their ships. Between our two forces, we should be able to stop them. I hope. Darlan out."

Frederic was watching the console in front of us. "Good news. We're getting feed from _Suffren_. Pegot recruited full crews from Human Forces Command for his ships and has another four hundred or so ex-Imperials on two merchant ships he's left a few light years back. Good news for King Gustav, too. There are some fifteen hundred Gotlanders coming to join him along with enough equipment for a tank battalion, an armored infantry battalion and an self-propelled artillery battalion. Ah ha! And he's getting four system defense boats."

"Assuming he lives long enough to see any of this." Baroness Sun added.

This was a day for surprises. We were interrupted by the sensor officer. "Sir! One of the enemy monitors is firing on one of their fast escorts. What the hell…?"

The fight between the two Peacekeeper ships was over almost as soon as it started. Then their task force came to a ragged stop.

"Incoming message, sir."

We saw another Peacekeeper face in the viewscreen. This one I knew, Sub-Commander Garrathan, one of the officers on our cruiser. She had a cut over one eye and looked half stunned. "You are the human commander?"

Darlan nodded. "Admiral Francois Darlan. Do you wish to negotiate?"

After a long pause, Garranthan nodded. "What…what conditions might we expect?"

Darlan smiled reassuringly. "One of our great military theorists has said that the mark of a great commander is not to defeat one's enemies, but to make them your friends. I may not be that great a commander, but I shall try. At the very least I can offer all of your personnel transport to a neutral planet of your choice to go from there as you please. But perhaps I can do better than that."

Garranthan looked truly shocked. Surrender to Charrids meant you were dinner. Surrender to Scarrans meant slavery with experimental surgery thrown in. Surrender to humans meant…this?"

She noticed me in the background. "May I speak to…Lieutenant Tarpa?"

I had to call on Baroness Sun for help, but we finally convinced Garranthan that humans were not, strictly speaking insane, just very, very odd, and that Admiral Darlan meant what he said. If the Peacekeepers surrendered, he'd happily send them elsewhere to be someone else's problem. We didn't use precisely those words, of course.

At last Garranthan surrendered and Darlan ordered her to leave her ships in space and take her personnel to the planet's surface by ship's boats.

When that was well under way, Darlan commed his task force. "I believe that there are still some among us who believe that our current superiority in weaponry will last forever. I invite any such to consider this action. A year ago we would have destroyed our opponents without loss, or even much effort. Today, we defeated them at some cost to ourselves. Consider what may happen in another year. Darlan out."


	9. Chapter 9

Once A Warrior King

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I own neither Farscape nor Hammer's Slammers, but you already knew that, didn't you? Rating: Pretty much K, or K+. I'll let you know if it changes. Time: Not too long after A Matter of Intelligence.

 **Lieutenant Frederic de Gautier**

My eyeballs felt like they were full of sand, my mouth thought a camel had slept in it and my brain…my brain…was refusing to function.

It had been four days since the surrender of the Peacekeepers. Neither my admiral nor King Gustav had been able to convince Captain, as she now was, Garranthan to sign any sort of formal agreement with us, but we had agreed to give them back their ships and let them return to the Keilan-Borta system. At the very least, any of the Peacekeeper's many factions would concentrate on them and not on us. In the meantime I was supposed to gather as much intelligence as I could on the Peacekeepers and their ships. Even with the help of specialists from our task force and from King Gustav, it was more work than we could possibly finish before the Peacekeepers reclaimed their ships.

I was headed for my quarters in the palace and a nice long sleep when I saw the Crichtons. I considered talking to them later, but…

"Baron Crichton. Baroness Sun. A minute of your time, if I may?"

Crichton smiled at me. "Sure, Freddy. But you look like dren, young feller."

The Baroness cut her husband off. "How can we help you, Lieutenant?"

"I've been examining the Peacekeeper ships in orbit. We found some propaganda recordings allegedly from Vice-Chancellor Grayza. Could you look at one of them, please?" I pulled a reader out and hit play. It was apparently to have been used if Admiral Olan and his people had accepted Grayza's offer to join her faction. In the recording, she babbled away happily about the glory of the Peacekeepers, how they were the greatest people in the Universe, etcetera, etcetera.

"Jesus!" Crichton gasped. "She looks like she's been rode hard and put up wet."

"It's the result of the heppel gland implants." Aeryn added with a smile.

"So this elderly woman is Vice-Chancellor Grayza?" It had seemed impossible when I had first seen the recording. The woman in the recording was stick thin with a slight tremor in one arm. Her hair was white and sparse, but her eyes still blazed.

"Oh, yes!" Aeryn said, her smile broadening. "I don't think the Universe will be bothered by Mele-On Grayza much longer. When the damage done by the heppel glands begins to show, the end is quite quick. She may even be dead by now."

"Gone but not forgotten, Baroness." I said. "Do you see the young woman standing behind the Vice Chancellor?" Both Crichtons nodded. "That's her daughter, Commandant Gaia Grayza. Our reports are that she's as intelligent as her mother, and more ruthless, if that's possible. Of course, that may just be propaganda, but we really don't know that much about her."

"Damn!" Crichton muttered. "She'll be after us, babe. Sure as shooting."

Aeryn smiled. "My shooting is sure, and I'll be happy to try it out on the Commandant."

I excused myself and headed off to bed. When I arrived at my quarters, I found Lyssa sprawled on my bed, her nose buried in a reader. I lay down next to her. "What are you reading, dear Lyssa?"

"Tactics and Operations for the Missile Frigate." She said, showing me the reader.

"Aren't you happy working for me in intelligence?" I asked, a bit worried.

"Of course, Frederic. But I'm a ship' officer, not a trained intelligence officer like you. I'm valuable now because of my knowledge of the Peacekeepers. Eventually my knowledge will become obsolete and I'll need to make myself useful in other ways. Admiral Darlan says I can use the combat simulator in the _Lady_ when I'm ready."

"You'll probably outrank me in no time." I grumped. "You'll probably replace Admiral Darlan when he retires."

She giggled and kissed me. "When I do I'll make sure you're right by me." Her face turned serious. "But now you must tell me what you found on their ships."

I was tired so I gave her a short briefing. " _Cielindo_ was Grayza's experimental missile ship. She was sent here to give the missiles a trial run. They only expected to face other Peacekeepers and King Gustav's ground forces, not our task force. I believe almost all of Grayza's missile experts were on the _Cielindo_ when it blew up. That should set her missile program back."

Lyssa nodded seriously. "Set back, but not terminated. And the other factions will continue with their work. I'm especially worried about Scorpius. He's very intelligent and very driven and is known for scientific research. Did you find anything else?"

"Not much that you wouldn't know, my love. We did get our first customer while I was up there."

"Customer?"

"A privateer, the _Ascalon_ , 18. They have a letter of marque from some Luxan warlord or another. They claim they're transporting a high value, low volume cargo for him. All they wanted was some fresh water and fresh air. What they have has been recycled endlessly. If they're legitimate, we may allow them to base themselves here, at least temporarily."

"I have some news for you, Frederic."

I smiled at her and fell asleep.

I awoke hours later. Lyssa was asleep beside me. I tried to get up without waking her, but she came awake as soon as I moved. Those Peacekeeper reactions.

"Did you have a good sleep, Frederic?"

I nodded, still sleepy. "Excellent, dearest." I pulled her towards me and kissed her. Surprisingly, she pushed me away, but with a smile.

"Business before pleasure. Isn't that the human expression?"

I grumped that it was. I didn't mention that I didn't think it was a very good expression right then.

"Then you must let me tell you my news. We got a courier from Arsenal while you were in orbit. Most importantly, Scarran Vice-War Minister Churd resigned his position and has returned to his estates."

That was interesting. "What reason did the Scarrans give for his resignation?"

She giggled. "A desire to spend more time with his family."

Even I laughed at that. "Did they get that line from us?" Lyssa said she didn't know, but doubted it. I thought furiously. "Churd was the most outspoken opponent of the Scarran-Peacekeeper Peace Treaty in the Scarran Court. He also was the biggest source for money, weapons and intelligence for the Charrids and Scarrans that "deserted" Imperial Scarran service and went raiding. This means a change in Scarran policy, I think."

Lyssa shook her head slowly. "A temporary change, probably. If it were a permanent change, Churd would have left with his head on a jinka pole. This way he can come back to power at any time. I don't think all of the Scarrans or any Charrids are ready for peace."

She was doubtlessly right. "Well, it is a step in the right direction. But everyone has overestimated the Eidelons. They think in terms of centuries or perhaps millennia. "

"There's more news, Frederic. A shipyard from a place called Caledonia is relocating to Arsenal. Vickers and Sons? Have you ever heard of them? And they are reportedly selling Marshal O'Donnell all of their ships left over from the war back in your universe."

"By the good God! How many ships, Lyssa? And what kind of ships will they be building here?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. This was just loose talk picked up from the courier's crew while they were relaxing at Farro's."

I thought for a moment. "This could be good. Vickers is a huge concern. They don't have any small shipyards, so whatever shipyard they set up here should be able to build up the Marshal's fleets quite nicely. And, we shall devoutly hope, leave something for the Marshal's good and trusty allies. That's us, of course."

"Doesn't Marshal O'Donnell already have shipyards at Arsenal? I can't remember their human names…Soda?"

"Skoda from New Bohemia and also Tata Industries from Gujerat both have orbital shipyards there. They can build anything up to and including armored cruisers but Vickers builds battleships, and good ones, too." I tried to figure out what this all meant for the balance of power in this universe.

Lyssa giggled, something that real Peacekeepers didn't do, I thought. "Are you imagining yourself commanding a battleship, dear?"

I laughed. "No, but Admiral Darlan will be doing just that as soon as he hears about this. He'll want me to come up with a plan to get one for us."

"There's more news."

"What?"

"Two human trading firms are setting up on Arsenal. They won't just be carrying cargos from Arsenal back to the Old Universe through the Artifact. They'll be operating on regular convoyed runs to various worlds here. No one seems to know what worlds or how many ships there'll be, or even when they'll start."

"Do you remember which companies are coming?" I asked.

Lyssa nodded. "Trans-Galactic Spacelines and Angel Transport."

"Hmm! Not the biggest firms, but still of respectable size. Damn! The laws against travel back and forth between universes are starting to break down. If that happens, we'll be seeing real human navies here, not just mercenaries and exiles. This could be serious."

"This is serious, too." Lyssa pulled her shirt up and threw it on the floor.

What could I say? She was right.


	10. Chapter 10

Once A Warrior King

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I own neither Farscape nor Hammer's Slammers, but you already knew that, didn't you? Rating: Pretty much K, or K+. I'll let you know if it changes. Time: Not too long after A Matter of Intelligence.

 **John Crichton**

Someone, in my universe, anyway, once said that war is ninety percent boredom and ten percent sheer terror. This was the boredom part. But, boredom I can handle.

Rudy and Kathleen O'Donnell had taken off in the _Wasp_ to do their Lone Ranger schtick elsewhere, leaving Aeryn and me behind. We'd received a message from the Frog King, AKA Rygel, telling us to stay here so Ryg could get a good idea of whatever there was off in the Jezzail system. Normally, we'd have suggested that Sluggo take a flying leap, but we'd also gotten a message from Pilot. It seems that Moya's daughter, Selic, was going through the terrible twos, and worse, she had the Leviathan flu that she'd given to Moya. Pilot's den had been awash in Leviathan snot in his message. He'd politely suggested we might want to put off our homecoming. Good idea, big boy!

Admiral Darlan was getting his forces ready to defend the New Gotland system while he took his two cruisers off to trade a few beads and blankets to the friendly inhabitants of Jezzail. Gustav and Darlan had added some missile batteries to the nearest moon and Gustav had his four missile boats up and running, if not yet battle ready.

"RNGS _Queen Ilsa_ , what was that?" A cold voice barked from the front of the bridge of the Austerlitz. That was my lovely wife. In case the Pecekeepers next door showed up in a bad mood, Aeryn had taken command of the _Austerlitz_ and _Solferino_ and was operating them using Peacekeeper tactics to give our side an idea of what to expect. She was ably assisted by Lyssa Tarpa, who was apparently Frederic de Gautier's main squeeze. I wondered if the young Frenchman understood just what it was like when an ex-Peacekeeper found you were "interesting".

A voice crackled over the comm. " _Queen Ilsa_ to command. Um, I was trying to get a position on your flank."

Aeryn snapped back, "You were also coming between our orbital missile batteries and your opponent blocking their shot. Have I not mentioned, more than once, that you will have to bring all of your weapons to bear if something like a command carrier raids you?"

"Yes, ma'am. You have."

"Then frelling act like it!" Aeryn snarled. "And have a complete analysis of the course you should have followed on my desk first thing tomorrow morning."

Aeryn was having a ball. Our life together had been far from peaceful, but it had been years and years since she'd commanded anything other than her Prowler.

Admiral Darlan broke in. "Command to all units. That's enough for one day. All units return to standard orbit around New Gotland. We'll do this again tomorrow. I want to leave here for Jezzail in a week or so. Darlan out."

The admiral turned to Aeryn. "So, how do you rate them?"

Aeryn smiled. "Quite good, actually. Your ships, the destroyers and frigates, are all commanded by combat veterans with veteran crews. It's the new missile boats and the orbital defenses that need work. They're crewed by newcomers to this universe. But they're well trained. They're just untried in battle. Green, is that the human word?"

Lieutenant Tarpa put her two krindars in. "And if we get hit by Peacekeepers from the Keilan-Borta system, we should get a warning from _Bonne Homme Richard_."

 _Bonne Homme Richard_ was the new name of Lyssa's old Peacekeeper scout, now upgraded with human sensors and with tweaked engines and weapons. Now it was staking out the Keilan-Borta system. Peacekeeper scouts had numbers and never names. Since she was part of a human command, Lyssa had insisted on a human name for her ship. I had thought of _Bonne Homme Richard_ , as it was the only French name of a warship that I knew. Everyone loved it. More, I expected, because the Hynerian noble with the hot wife had suggested it than for any other reason, but I was happy. I'm sure Captain Jones and Ben Franklin were too.

The lovely and determined Lyssa was going with us to Jezzail as well. A human officer had command of the _Bonne Homme Richard_ for now. Lyssa had given about a dozen reasons why she should go with Darlan's two cruisers, but everyone knew that she wasn't going to let de Gautier out of her sight. De Gautier didn't seem to mind.

The next ten days sped past. Aeryn and Lyssa ran Darlan's cruisers as Peacekeepers, Scarrans, Charrids, Luxans, Scorvians, Ilanics, and Zenetian pirates. For a change, Darlan had them attack using what they understood human tactics to be. The idea was that the two ex-Peacekeepers might just see something the humans missed about their own tactics. They didn't and I was bored out of my skull for ten long days.

And then we were off. Not on the yellow brick road, but off none the less. Darlan had plotted a course that took us through the least traveled area between New Gotland and Jezzail. More boredom. But, I remembered that the alternative could have been sheer terror.

At long last, we pulled into the Jezzail system.

"What in the good God's name is all that?" Asked a voice on the bridge of the _Austerlitz_.

"Are our sensors functioning properly?" Darlan growled.

After a pause, "Yes sir. Everything is in order. This is without a doubt the most crowded solar system I've ever seen."

Lyssa spoke up. "This must be the Project."

Darlan turned to her. "What is the Project?"

She shrugged. "No one but the Jezzailians really know. It's not a secret, exactly, since they will talk about it. But it doesn't make sense to everyone who's talked to them. Something about making the universe perfect, starting with this solar system. Anyway, they've moved everything in the Oort clouds out beyond their farthest planet into closer orbits. I'm not sure what they plan to do with them."

"Those aren't all just space junk out there." Aeryn said, leaning over a sensor screen. "There are tens of thousands of ships out there. Everything from little one person scooters to huge mining ships."

I shook my head. "Earth has about a half million dwarf planets, so called. Trans-Neptunian objects is the preferred scientific name. Most of them aren't big enough for Superman to change clothes behind, but put them all together…"

"And you get that." Aeryn finished, gesturing to the sensor screen.

Darlan scowled at the screen. "Well, for all I care, they can sweep up every frozen gas cloud from here to the Magellenic Clouds and be welcome to them. We're here to trade. Communications officer, let them know were here."

It took a good ten microts to attract anyone's attention, but we were eventually directed to a hollowed out hunk of rock where we were told the trading would take place.

The Jezzailians were a hive race, think of ants, only more so. We were met by several of their castes. To no one's surprise, Jool turned out to be an expert on hive races and the Jezzailians in particular. Darlan came with us so the Jezzailians wouldn't feel they were being palmed off with underlings, in spite of Jool's insistence that they could care less. De Gautier came as the task force's diplomatic corps with his main squeeze hanging on his arm. Chiana came along since she said we'd be cheated blind without her expert guidance. Last, but not least, were Rygel XVI's merry man and woman. I was always interested in the new things the Universe had and Aeryn tagged along to keep an eye on me.

Three castes were present, according to Jool. The first three Jezzailians were symmetrical bipeds, roughly human sized, of a rather dull whitish-yellow in color with some sort of ruff around the top of their heads. They had long, skinny arms, short stumpy legs and what looked a lot like a beer belly. Jool told us they were members of the bureaucrat caste who stood in front of us, dressed in a set of nice deep blue embroidered capes, baggy red pants and a nice pair of leather boots. They'd be running the show.

Discretely to the rear were the soldiers. Half again as tall as your average human and about twice as heavy, they were all bulging muscles, longs snaggly claws and bad attitude. They wore dark body armor and carried what looked like clubs, but weren't. Jool didn't know exactly what the weapons did, but had assured us they would kill.

Last were the workers. Tall, well- muscled, damn near nude and with blank expressions on their faces. Jool had said they were strong back and weak mind material. Their only clothing was a kind of leather breechclout.

What I suppose was the head bureaucrat stepped forward and spoke. "You are aware of our trading policies?" He asked in a soft, sibilant voice.

"We understand." Jool replied.

Negotiating this was not. The head honchos would look things over and decide what they'd take from us and how much they'd give us. We could take it or leave it. We also had our own little E-Bay set up. We had samples or computer brochures of all the stuff we had back home that we could trade and what we'd like in return.

Luckily the three wise men told us to take a load off and relax, otherwise the next four arns would have been unbearable. They spent the whole time playing with all of the new toys we'd brought and mumbling among themselves. At long last they made a decision.  
"We will take all of your trade goods. This is what we will give you." He held out a data flimsy. Jool took it and nodded. "I think this will be acceptable. Admiral?" She handed the flimsy to Darlan. He raised his eyebrows and nodded. "Yes. Quite acceptable."

The head salesman handed over another flimsy. "This is what we will require from you on the next trip and what we will give you."

Again both Jool and Darlan nodded and accepted the deal. Darlan called up his ships and ordered the cargo to be unloaded and the new stuff picked up. We all went back to _Austerlitz_ on a transport. We weren't six drenches of the ground before Darlan let out a whoop of joy. "By the good God, Professor Hovalis! They bought everything and look what we get in return! This place is a gold mine! A Golconda!" He clapped de Gautier on the shoulder. "We shall have our heavy cruiser in a few years at this rate, Frederic."

"If we can get it home and sell it for the prices we'd estimated." de Gautier replied. Darlan didn't seem to hear his lieutenant, but sat there looking off into the distance, probably commanding his new fleet.

Unloading our old cargo and loading the new took only a few arns and we were soon ready to leave Jezzail and its charming inhabitants without having to buy any of the usual tourist stuff.

We had no sooner headed of than the sensor officer on _Austerlitz_ spoke up. "Three ships headed directly for us. Their sensors and engine readings are nothing like the locals, sir. Could be trouble."

Lieutenant Tarpa crossed over to the sensor station and had a look. "It is trouble, sir. That's an Ilanic cruiser and two escorts."

"Turn away from them and get us to a point where we can go faster than light. We should be able to outrun them." Darlan ordered.

We headed away, but ran into more bad luck. Why do these things always happen to me?

"Sir, we have more bogeys ahead. They're not the locals and not the Ilanics, but their sensor reading look like warships."

Again Lieutenant Tarpa took a look. "Frell! Those are Scorvians. They can't be cooperating with the Ilanics."

"One group is a renegade, perhaps?" de Gautier asked.

"This close to the Ilanic and Scorvian home systems? They'd have been hunted down by now."

"Can you tell what kind of ships they are, Lieutenant?" Darlan asked.

"One Scorvian cruisers, sir and three escorts, no four escorts, sir. Something analogous to a human destroyer."

"Could they be preparing to attack each other?"

Tarpa and de Gautier put their heads together for a micron. "No sir." de Gautier replied. "They're all headed for us, not each other. They're after us."

"Give me a course away from both groups and contact both of them and find out what they want. Advise _Solferino_ to conform to our movements. And contact the Jezzalaians and see how they feel about this. It's a violation of their neutrality, I'm sure. "

Neither the Scorvians nor the Ilanics replied to our calls, but it didn't take a genius to see what their intentions were. The Jezzalains didn't reply either. It looked like they were a see no evil, hear no evil, and don't do squat group.

Normally, we'd have had no problems shedding our unwanted guests. Human warships could outrun and/or outshoot anything hereabouts. So what went wrong this time? What happened was that we were in the most crowded solar system imaginable. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of lumps of rock, frozen gas clouds and assorted space junk were all over the place. Most of them were nothing more than big rocks, but try hitting a big rock while moving at a couple of percent of the speed of light. That plus trying to avoid Jezzalian ships that ranged from one-being scooters to multi-million ton mining ships and you had the makings of a video game to keep any teenager happy for days. Too bad it was real. No sooner would we start getting away from our pursuers than we'd have to slam on the brakes and turn to miss one damn thing or another.

After about twenty microts, we got unlucky.

"Warship dead ahead!" screamed a sensor officer. "It's coming straight at us from behind that gas cloud. It'll pass us at about six thousand kilometers, in less than one minute."

"Open fire!" Darlan commanded.

"We're too close for our big ship killers to arm." de Gautier shouted. "Fire our anti-missile missiles at him and use our directed energy weapons."

We unloaded on the other ship. It exploded just as it passed us, but he got in his licks with his frag cannons. There was a monstrous "clang" and the _Austerlitz_ shook like a cat threatened with a bath.

"Damage control, report." Darlan growled.

There was a long silence, then finally someone came on. "The hull is punctured at Section Alpha fifteen and Delta Seven. Both are small and were contained by temporary patches. We've lost five heavy missile launchers, one twelve-gigawatt mount and all of the anti-missile missiles in groups twenty two, twenty four and twenty six. Engineering reports no damage, sensors and comms are nominal, life support is at one hundred percent. Repairs on our weapons systems will require shipyard work, sir."

Darlan swore. "We've lost all of our anti-missile missiles on the port aft area. If we get attacked from there at close range, we're in trouble."

The Ilanic cruiser ran out of luck next. He hit something than looked like a small Jezzalian shuttle, maybe big enough for a dozen people. Ilanic warships are tough, so he wasn't destroyed, but his speed fell off to almost nothing and he started to limp away.

Darlan spotted something. " _Solferino_! Turn to 177 mark 250, one of their destroyers is damned near at a stop after nearly hitting that Jezzail ship. We should be able to attack him from port and starboard at about fifty thousand kilometers. Execute….Now!"

The Scorvian saw what was coming and was pouring on the coals to get away from us, but to no avail. We both launched with the Scorvian between us. He never had a chance.

" _Merde_! What was that?" someone yelled.

Someone later found we had hit a group of rocks, none of which were much bigger than my hand.

"Damage control!"

"We've taken a hit in engineering, sir. We've lost thirty percent of our power. Estimates are it'll take six hours to repair."

We didn't have six hours to try to outrun the bad guys on seventy percent power.

Darlan nodded. " _Solfrerino_ , you should be able to head straight for that huge Jezzalian ship ahead, miss it by a good millimeter and head for interstellar space and outrun these bastards. Do so, now."

There was a pause. "Affirmative. " _Vive l'Empereur_ , sir."

We turned to face our pursuers to give _Solferino_ a better chance. The Ilanics, having lost their cruiser, were headed away from the battle, but not too far. If we managed to shoot up the Scorvians, they might attack them, or us.

We headed through the Scorvian task force as fast as we could. I heard our missiles roar away and saw one of the smaller ships blow up. I also heard and felt the enemy's frag cannons hit us.

"Damage control, sir. We've lost primary fire control. Back up should keep us in the fight, but if we lose that…"

"We'll try to run. Head back in-system, helm. We'll try to hide among the ships and spatial debris and perhaps get a shot at those bastards."

We turned, but our enemies turned after us. We zoomed between Jezzalian ships, clouds of gas and planet sized hunks of rock. We were actually getting ahead of the Scorvians when we had to jink wildly to avoid a dozen or more huge Jezzalian mining ships.

"Are those bastards trying to get in our way?" I asked no one in particular.

De Gautier answered me. "Probably not, Baron. The locals simply have little interest in outsiders once we've served our purpose."

"Wasn't part of our purpose to come back with more stuff for them?"

De Gautier shrugged. "They know others will be by to trade with them sooner or later."

"It'll be later if the Crips and the Bloods keep shooting up us innocent bystanders."

In the end, our shot up ship was just too slow to outrun our Scorvian pursuers. "I think we may as well try to turn on them now." Darlan said quietly. "If we surprise them, we might just have a chance."

I decided against saying anything about snowballs in Hell and just gave Aeryn what I hoped was an encouraging smile. Her smile was more encouraging, but what he hell, it always has been.

"This is Admiral Darlan to all hands. We will be turning and attacking our enemies soon. As soon as we're just out of their frag cannon range, we'll fire our missiles and fire as fast as we can." Darlan stopped and looked at his officers on the bridge. " _Vive l'Empereur_!"

The ship literally shook with an answering, " _Vive l"Empereur_!"

Darlan nodded. "Emergency turn…NOW!"

Even with the inertial compensators and the artificial gravity, I could feel the ship straining as it turned. We shot forward and I heard someone mutter that engineering had disengaged all of the safety protocols to give us maximum power. Well, someone was going to be surprised and I was sure it would be Mama Crichton's little boy, John.

I was about to bend over and kiss my ass good-bye when someone yelled, "I've got missile tracking radars from dead ahead. Those are Imperial missiles. By God, it's _Solferino_!

The Scorvians could run, but they couldn't hide. All of their attention had been on us, allowing _Solferino_ to sneak up behind them and fire a full spread of missiles at close range. We fired as well and turned away from the oncoming Scorvians. First an escort and then the Scorvian cruiser blew up. What was left of the Scorvian task force limped away. We didn't follow.

"Captain Botella," Darlan said with just a small quaver in his voice, "I really should have a word with you about obeying orders." There was a pause. "At another time, perhaps."

"Yes, sir." Botella replied. "I'm afraid we hit something just as we fired our missiles. We've lost all of our forward sensors."

"As badly as our two ships have been hit, I imagine any fighting we do will be while we're running away, so it's no problem."

My adrenaline was just returning to normal when it shot up again. "There's a big power source coming on line behind the gaseous moon around planet number six. It's big and I think it's a ship."

Sure enough, a ship was pulling out from behind the moon. "Frell!" Aeryn and Lyssa muttered. "That's a command carrier."

And so it was. Whose command carrier it was we soon found out.

"Incoming comm, in clear, sir."

Darlan shrugged, a very Gallic shrug. "Well, let's see who he is."

The viewscreen showed a slender, dark haired woman in a Peacekeeper uniform. I had never seen her before, but I knew who she was. Damn!

"I am Commandant Gaia Grayza. I demand your immediate surrender. If you surrender, you and your crew will be well treated and will be allowed to work on providing weapons for the Peacekeepers. All Peacekeeper traitors, including Aeryn Sun, Lyssa Tarpa must be handed over to face justice. So must the human John Crichton who has insulted my family. Your reply?"

Darlan gave her a long cold stare. "I will misquote General Chambronne to you: The Imperial Navy dies, it does not surrender."

I'm not sure I would have picked that quote, but it wasn't my turn to run the Universe. The younger Grayza smiled. Damn, but she looked vicious, more so than Mommy Dearest.

"Very well. Not my preferred outcome, but it will serve. My command carrier has double the usual number of Prowlers. They're not as deadly as your human missiles, but you'll see they are deadly."

"Another one, sir." The sensor officer interrupted. "It looks like another command carrier. He's been lying cold iron behind the big moon of planet number two."

Commandant Grayza didn't look any too happy about this. I wondered who had come a-calling.

I didn't have long to wait. "Damn! What is this, the reunion tour of Village People? Did you bring the Cowboy and the Soldier with you, Leatherman?"

Scorpius smiled. He wasn't any better at it than Grayza. "And it's good to see you again, John."

"Scorpius, what is the meaning of this?" Grayza snarled. We had the two of them split screened on our viewscreen.

"The meaning of this?" Scorpy Answered smoothly. "Why I'm merely visiting a friendly solar system and observing."

"Do not interfere in this!" Grayza shot back.

"Interfere in what?" Scorpy was enjoying this.

"I am about to take the surrender of these humans and arrest the traitors Sun and Tarpa."

Hmm! Grayza had managed to forget all about blowing us to smithereens.

Scorpius smiled, not the most reassuring expression under most circumstances, but I liked it now. "Surrender? Of the ships of a friendly foreign power? That is most irregular. I'm afraid I'd have to advise Dominar Rygel and Marshal O'Donnell of your actions."

"You wouldn't dare!" Grayza was screaming now.

I had to put my two krindars in. "And I'm sure you can trust Scorpius to stay out of the fight, once we've been destroyed and your ship is all shot up. I'm sure Scorp would never take advantage of the situation. I mean look at him. You'd buy a used command carrier from him, right?"

"If you even think about attacking me, Scorpius, I swear I'll…"

"You'll what?" Scorp cut her off. "Be destroyed? The ship your mother was using to test missiles has been destroyed, the ship I've been using for the same purpose is right here. I'm sure that my missiles are not nearly as good as human missiles, but I'm sure you'd find they are quite effective. Far more so than your Prowlers."

The two glared at each other. Then Scorpius spoke. "It would be best if you left."

For a micron, I thought Grayza was going to start shooting. Then her image clicked off of the viewscreen and we saw her ship headed away.

"You are Vice-Chancellor Scorpius of the Peacekeepers?" Darlan asked.

Scorpy nodded. "At your service, Admiral Darlan."

"And your intentions are?"

"My intentions? Oh, purely peaceful, I assure you. Having come here and charted the Jezzalian solar system, I'm heading for a world called New Gotland where I hope to meet with its monarch, King Gustav. What are your intentions, Admiral?"

"I too am headed for New Gotland." Darlan said shortly.

"Excellent! We should proceed together, I think. For mutual safety."

This was a bit too much for me. "Scorpy, do you mean to say you have no other intentions towards us? Nothing involving worm holes and Aurora chairs for instance?"

Scorpy laughed. He was getting better at it. "Not at all, John. I have more experience with humans, well, with one human anyway, than anyone else in the Peacekeepers. I have learned to never underestimate them and never to make them angry. As humans are now a powerful force in this Universe, I have every intention of trying to make friends with them. Something I should have tried with you had I but understood you better." He gave me one of his skeletal grins. "Besides, John, given the battered condition of your ships, you couldn't possibly outrun me on the way to New Gotland. We're going together no matter what."

A quick discussion with engineering established that Scorpy was right. We headed back to New Gotland as one big more or less happy family.

Surprisingly, Scorpius was a good boy and we got back to New Gotland with no problems.

"There a task force in orbit, Admiral Darlan." The sensor officer called. "A destroyer picket ship is headed our way. He'll be in comm range…about now."

Sure enough. "Admiral Darlan? This is HFCS _Emden_. Welcome back, sir. Admiral von Papen was worried about you, sir. There's also a Peacekeeper warship at the edge of the system, Sir. Do you know anything about him?"

Darlan explained who Scorpy was, but it turned out that both King Gustav and Admiral von Papen knew about our boy Scorp. I hoped neither one trusted him any further than I could throw his command carrier, but it seemed diplomatic niceties would be observed. Scorpius would be allowed to visit and great diplomatic lies would be told by all parties.

Von Papen commanded two battle cruisers, a couple of heavy cruisers and a dozen or so destroyers. As he told us later, it was Marshal O'Donnell's policy to have the occasional heavy task force show up unexpectedly so that no one would ever know who might be waiting if you decided to attack your human neighbors.

"Those are battle cruisers?" Aeryn asked as we got closer.

"Yes, Baroness." de Gautier replied. "HFCS _Seydlitz_ and _Lutzow_ , ninety missile mounts apiece. Well armed, fast, but not well armored, as with most battle cruisers. The cruisers are _Blucher_ …"

De Gautier was cut off by a comm from Admiral von Papen who wanted to know all about the trip to merry old Jezzail.

"Baron Crichton?"

I nodded. "That's me.

"There's a comm from a ship called Moya. Its pilot would like to speak to you."

"Moya's here?" Okay, dumb question. I walked over to the comm station with Aeryn on my heels. "Pilot! How's things?"

Pilot had learned not to take me literally, so he just said things were optimal.

"So Moya's over the Leviathan crud? Where's Selic?"

"Moya and I are quite well, think you. We've met a lovely Leviathan lady, Pellophanesee, who has a child slightly older than Selic. Her name is Poloolan. Pellophanesee is taking care of Selic. Both children are playing at the edge of this solar system."

"A Leviathan baby sitter. Cool! So what brings you out here?"

"Moya would like to return to the Hynerian home world. We were hoping you might be ready to return."

I put one arm around Aeryn. "Ready, willing and able."


	11. Chapter 11

Once A Warrior King

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I own neither Farscape nor Hammer's Slammers, but you already knew that, didn't you? Rating: Pretty much K, or K+. I'll let you know if it changes. Time: Not too long after A Matter of Intelligence.

 **Frederic de Gautier**

"Lieutenant Commander de Gautier, reporting as ordered, sir." I halted and saluted my commander as I crossed the threshold into his office. He waved at me vaguely, acknowledging my salute and continued to stare at the viewscreen on the far wall.

I sighed inwardly. Our commander, Admiral Darlan, was busy looking at the newest ship in his command. The screen covered nearly the entire wall, some four meters by four and showed the view from our new lunar base. The ship he was studying so intently was IFNS _Normandie_ , 48, a heavy cruiser. Orbiting slightly further out were our two newly repaired light cruisers. Our other ships were out of sensor range. After our difficulties, (What an understatement.), in the Jezzail system, Marshal O'Donnell had decided that perhaps we could use a heavy cruiser after all. The increased shipbuilding capabilities of his base at Arsenal and ships coming from our Old Universe had freed up a brand new cruiser for us.

"Come in, Frederic, come in. How did your mission as my diplomat go?"

"Not well, sir, as I had thought. Baron and Baroness Crichton will take our offer to Dominar Rygel, but they concur that we are too far from his domains to interest him in any sort of military or political alliances. However, the nanotechnology and bio-engineering products we brought from Jezzail are greatly in advance of anything in either Universe. Dominar Rygel and everyone else will be happy to deal with us as a commercial enterprise."

"Ah! That's a start, Frederic. As our finances improve, some more destroyers are in order, in the short term. Then, another heavy cruiser, and we must start considering acquiring a capital ship." Admiral Darlan stared at the viewscreen without actually seeing anything there. He was seeing himself on the bridge of a battleship with his cruisers, destroyers and scouts around his flagship. I allowed him to dream. After all, a while ago I had felt that a heavy cruiser was out of the question for many years.

"What do you have in your capacity as my intelligence officer, Frederic?"

"Vice-Chancellor Grayza is still alive and seems determined to hang on forever. She has several Diagnosians attending her as well as a Delvian P'Au who specializes in cellular repairs. Most of what we're getting is either propaganda from Grayza which states she'll live forever, or we're getting the opposite from Vice-Chancellor's Scorpius' people."

"Do we have anything from a source we can trust?"

I shook my head. "The only thing we have is evidence of a small scrap between Admiral Braca's forces and Commandant Gaia Grayza's forces. Some minor damage was inflicted, but no ships lost. Both sides withdrew."

Darlan shook his head. "Are the Grayzas trying to push Braca back to Scorpius?"

I shrugged. I had no idea. "We have some information concerning the Ilanics and Scorvians, sir. It seems neither one gave much credence to rumors that humans from another Universe with advanced weaponry were about. They thought we were some sort of Sebacean renegades. They expected to flatten us with their task forces. They were shocked to be beaten. They apparently now consider us to be very, very dangerous. Too dangerous to try to attack, in fact."

"Wait until we show up at Jezzail with our new heavy cruiser." Darlan snorted.

"It seems the Jezzalians were shocked as well, sir. They also expected the Ilanics and Scorvians to defeat us with ease."

Darlan laughed. "We are full of surprises, aren't we? What else Frederic?"

"The _Ascalon_ , sir. As you ordered, we were more than happy to let the _Lady_ do some up-keeping and repair work on her. I got aboard as a yard dog to have a good look at her. She's Kent built, nearly as fast as our destroyers, excellent sensors, good range, and well-armed. She mounts Blue Falcon missiles. They're not as hard hitting as our missiles, but they have a bit more range and are a bit faster. It's all in my report, sir."

Darlan ignored the proffered report. "What I want to know is what they're doing, Frederic. I have no desire to interfere with legitimate trade, but if they're smuggling weapons to some warlord, or stealing somebody's religious treasures, or whatever, I'd like to know before some enemy of theirs shows up looking to shoot up the people who've been repairing their worst enemy's ships."

I shrugged. "Our intelligence source on New Gotland hasn't been able to find out much, sir. _Ascalon's_ crew drinks there, and are very well paid, but they don't say much. I have found that what they bring back from wherever they go comes in relatively small boxes, about half a meter by half a meter by a meter and a half. They're not very heavy, either. Several crewmen were heard to complain that they had to carry five or six which were hard to handle. Their customer seems to be a Luxan as they say, but he could be a front man and we haven't been able to find out anything about him."

"All in all, _Ascalon's_ crew is better disciplined and better trained than I would expect a privateer's crew to be. Of course, some privateers have to be above average, but there is a possibility they were part of someone's black ops now gone rogue, or at least on their own."

"Well, keep trying, Frederic."

"Then there's Captain Braganza, sir. I think I have an idea."

"Braganza?" Darlan said sourly. Captain Braganza commanded a former blockade runner, _Dom Pedro_ , and wished to operate from the New Gotland system. We thought she wanted to trade with the Jezzail system in competition with us. Our agreement with Marshal O'Donnell precluded us from preventing anyone from carrying on legitimate trade, but did not require us to help anyone either. Braganza herself had been a woman of striking beauty when younger and was still a handsome woman. She was also abrasive, self-centered and grasping. She had first gone to King Gustav but had found that Gustav lacked the repair facilities that she would need for her ship. Our _Wessex Lady_ would suit her purposes just fine if we had any reason to cooperate with her.

"As I mentioned, sir, the _Ascalon_ mounts Blue Falcon missiles and seems to have a ready supply of re-loads. _Dom Pedro_ mounts the same missiles, but has less than half her full war load. We could ask _Ascalon_ for partial payment in missiles and sell them to Braganza."

The admiral looked at me skeptically. "And this would help us how?"

"We would ask for a percentage of her profits rather than a straight money payment."

Darlan smiled. "That could work. That just could work. Turn a competitor into partner?"

"I had more in mind developing some intelligence sources to begin with, sir. Armed merchantmen can go places that warships would not be welcome. As her partners, we'd be within our rights to review her records to find out where she's gone, who she's dealt with and what she's bought and sold. There's so much we don't know about this New Universe."

"We might also consider setting up an operation similar to what we had on Forest of Bazil, we'd provide escorts for local merchant convoys. There are some planets nearby that seem to be worth trading with. And they'll be more worth trading with if they can be traded with safely."

Darlan nodded. "Go on, Frederic."

"We have a powerful task force, a secure, well-armed base, access to Human Forces Command's facilities and supplies, and the only repair facility for dozens of light years. And the only human operated repair facility in nearly a hundred light years. With the base on our moon, the new immigrants and help from the Marshal, we can expand our facilities and attract ships from all over, both local and human. We'd make a profit from all of this, of course, both as a repair facility and providing convoy escorts."

"We wouldn't be able to buy more warships if we put more resources into expanding our base, though." Darlan countered.

"But over the long term, sir, we'd be able to buy more ships and maintain them better."

Darlan thought for a few moments. "Check with the officers on the _Lady,_ _as well as the technical people here, don't forget to talk to the newcomers. Have a report for me as soon as you can."_ __

 _I began to leave, but Darlan stopped me._ __

 _"Frederic, there is one more thing. You do realize that you are no longer a very junior officer. You are the head of my diplomatic corps and my intelligence service. You are a man of some standing and substance, Frederic."_ __

 _"And we're no longer a homeless band of exiles. We have a powerful task force, a strong ally, and allies of our own. We have a considerable financial stake now. And now we are a home for refugees from the old French Empire." Darlan waved at the airless moon outside our base. "Oh, to be sure it's not much now, but in time, this will be the capital of the re-born French Empire. We expect two shiploads in another month, with several thousand refuges from our old Empire."_ __

 _I had absolutely no idea what the old boy was going on about. "Sir?"_ __

 _"You're sleeping with one of your subordinates, Frederic."_ __

 _"Lyssa, sir? That's is, Lieutenant Tarpa?"_ __

 _"Precisely, Frederic. Precisely."_ __

 _"Should I not sleep with her?"_ __

 _"No, no! That's not what I'm getting at. You should make an honest woman of her, Frederic."_ __

 _It took me a second to grasp the rather old fashioned term the admiral had used. I hesitated for a second more. "Sir, marriage is not really a Peacekeeper tradition."_ __

 _Darlan waved that away. "Baroness Crichton seems to have found the state of marriage to her liking. So has Vice-Marshal O'Donnell, Lieutenant Redd and others I could mention."_ __

 _"I'll discuss it with her, sir."_ __

 _"Excellent, my boy! Excellent!"_ __

 _I saluted and did an about face. I walked down the passageway to our quarters. Oddly, I didn't find the upcoming discussion at all troubling. Rather the opposite, in fact._ __

 _The End_

 _ **Author's note: This is the last of the crossovers I wrote some years ago in the Farscape/Hammer's Slammers universes. For those who enjoy Farscape or just science fiction, I'm working on another crossover. This brings John and Aeryn into the universe of Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry and the Terran Empire. I am also continuing to write Castle stories here.**_


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